A World Without Superman
by Jade4813
Summary: Because there can be no Superman in a world without Lois Lane, Clark must take a journey to recover what he never had - and become the man he was supposed to be. Sequel to A World Without Lois Lane. Clois.
1. Prologue

**A/N: **Well, I promised a sequel to WWLL, and here it is! (If you haven't read it, you might want to do so first, or this world's Clark won't make much sense for you, I expect.) Hopefully it'll be updated far more frequently than my other two stories have been as of late. :D

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing but the idea. I only wish!

**A World Without Superman**

**Prologue**

_"True love stories never have endings."  
- Richard Bach_

"You never find yourself until you face the truth."  
- Pearl Bailey

In the loft of his barn, in the place that his father had dubbed Clark's "Fortress of Solitude" long before an ice palace had grown out of the ice in the Arctic, Clark stared into the eyes of the woman he'd been told he was destined to love. And then he wished her goodbye.

_"I don't think it would have taken very much at all for me to fall in love with you," _she'd said, and those words both comforted him and tore at him. She was the most amazing woman he'd ever met, and he was well aware of the fact that while she didn't _think _it would take very much to fall in love with him, he _knew _it would take very little at all for him to fall head over heels in love with her.

But he couldn't allow himself the luxury of being that selfish. As much as he wanted to give into his desire to keep her with him, he couldn't ignore everything he'd learned in the time since Lois had first appeared on his doorstep. Somewhere, there was another man who loved Lois far more than Clark did at present, and he had no doubt that Lois would give up anything and everything for that man. He could keep her here, in his world, but he would never be able to make her happy if he did so. And so, because he knew that it wouldn't take much to love her, he recognized that he had to put her happiness above his own and let her go.

The smile she threw him, the quietly murmured, "Thank you…Superman," almost made it worthwhile.

As the light spilled over the two of them, he closed his eyes and willed her to be happy, whatever that would take, and he tried to ignore the pain in his chest that he felt when he realized that it would mean he would lose forever any chance that he would ever have what she had with the man she loved. His Lois was dead, taken from the world long before he'd ever had the chance to meet her.

_I wish… _Squeezing his eyes shut, he willed her to be happy, but even as he the light fell through the open loft window, he couldn't stop the thought that came traitorously to mind. _I wish…_

"Clark? Lois? What's going on?" he heard someone ask, but the voice came as if from a great distance. Then he felt a slight pressure on his arm, as if someone had grabbed hold of him, but he didn't really process the sensation. _I wish…_

Then there was a pain so intense that it felt like his body was burning, trapped in the center of the sun. He felt light so intense it blinded him, even though his eyes saw only darkness. He screamed, but the sound was swallowed up by the eternal void around him, and he was lost.

Screams tore from his throat, but nobody heard. Even he heard nothing, though he felt another presence nearby, or possibly more than one; it was impossible to tell. The presence was benevolent but demanding. Calculating but wise.

_It may be too late._

This is what he wants.

There is nothing we can do. It is far too late to turn back the sands of time in his world.

Then we send him to her.

But she does not believe.

Neither does he.

It will not be easy for him. He could lose everything.

It is his choice.

Very well…Do not judge her too harshly, Kal-El. She is lost, like you.

Then the presence was gone but the pain remained, burning through him until he was certain he was about to lose his mind. Sanity fled. His senses fled. His thoughts, his feelings, his sense of self and reason all fled. But the pain remained, burning through him so fiercely and so thoroughly that he wondered if there would be anything left of himself in its wake.

And then, suddenly, mercifully, the pain faded, though Clark's scream still echoed in the air around him, strangely hollow in the aftermath. His eyes still clenched tightly closed, he rolled over and scrambled onto all fours, where he held his body aloft with shaky arms as he retched repeatedly. Sweat trailed down his brow and tears ran down his cheeks as his entire body heaved over and over. Finally, when the tremors had calmed and he had regained some control over his body, his eyes flickered open.

"Are you okay?" he heard a familiar voice ask from just behind him, and though he recognized the speaker, it wasn't the person he'd been hoping to hear.

"Y-yeah," he muttered, embarrassed by his discomposure as he stumbled gracelessly and somewhat weakly to his feet. "I'm sorry…I don't know what just happened. Is Lois…?" Even as he said her name and gazed hopefully around, he knew that it was hopeless. She was gone.

"Don't worry about it," Chloe murmured, sounding embarrassed for him. With a quick clearing of her throat, she confirmed, "Lois is gone. I don't know where…"

"She went home," he answered, cutting her off, and even though there was a crushing sadness in the wake of this revelation, there was also a certain amount of happiness and relief. His wish had been successful. Lois was finally returned to the man she loved. She was where she belonged. She was home. At least, he imagined she was, but since the alternative – that she had unintentionally been sent to another world not her own – was too horrible to imagine, he chose not to. No, Clark was well aware of the numerous mistakes he'd committed in his life, but for the first time in an almost endless span of years, he felt absolutely certain that the course he had just chosen had been the right one.

With a sigh, he let go of the numerous possibilities he'd entertained over the last few days – a series of progressively unlikely scenarios, all culminating in the same end: Lois realizing she truly loved him and choosing to stay behind. It had been a pleasant dream, but, in the end, he decided the reality was far better. Lois had been the most amazing woman he'd ever met; she deserved far better than the broken shell of a hero that he had allowed himself to become.

_"Thank you…Superman," _she had said, and he steeled his jaw. She'd been wrong, undoubtedly overly kind in her assessment of his character. He wasn't Superman and never had been. But, still…maybe there was still hope that he could be, even if he didn't have her by his side, to help him up when he fell. He'd been depending on others, leaning on others, for too long. So perhaps it was only right that this – the greatest and most difficult thing he'd ever taken it upon himself to do – was a journey he took alone.

Feeling slightly renewed by his new-found sense of purpose, Clark took a step forward, thinking for a moment to look out the window to gaze out at the farmland that had always brought him such peace. When his foot fell on the loft's floorboards, however, he heard something crunch under his tread. With an inexplicable surge of dread, he lifted his foot to see what he had stepped upon.

On the floor of the loft, the shattered remains of the crystal that had brought Lois Lane to his world and then sent her home again lay scattered. Perhaps its last task had been almost too much for the crystal to manage. Either way, the end was the same. Even if he wished it, Lois would not be returned to him any time soon.

Sadness welled up inside him as he gingerly leaned down to pick up one of the shards. As soon as his fingers grazed the broken crystal, however, a series of images flickered through his mind, almost too quickly for him to process. Lois, swept up in the arms of the man she loved as he swooped out of the sky. Leaning into his embrace as the two of them sat on the couch and she shared her story. In his arms at night, the two of them clutching each other and desperately refusing to let go. On the day of her wedding, white flowers threaded into her hair as she looked at the man awaiting her in front of the alter, and she was filled with such love that it almost poured out of her like a visible presence.

In the span of a moment no longer than a heartbeat, he saw an entirely different world unfurl in front of him, and he knew his sacrifice had not been in vain. She was happy, and she was home.

Straightening, he ignored the broken crystal on the ground. It had done its job. It was over.

Rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, Clark turned to look at his guest. With a wry smile, he suggested, "I guess we should go tell my parents what happened. I'm sure they're worried."

As Chloe gave him a nod of assent, he took a couple of steps toward the stairs, and then he stopped abruptly as a realization finally penetrated his consciousness and he noticed that there was something distinctly _wrong _about his surroundings. A quick glance around only confirmed his suspicions.

His old, well-used couch was no longer in its usual place. The desk with the globe nearby had disappeared. Gone were all the photos and various other bits of paraphernalia of his life. Instead, straight piles of slowly disintegrating boxes were stacked around the perimeter of the loft, like someone's life had been neatly packed away to fade discreetly from memory.

"What the he…?" he began before his voice faded in bewilderment. What the hell was going on?

A suspicion both wonderful and terrible caused his stomach to clench, and he bolted toward the stairs, his companion momentarily forgotten. As he all but flew down the steps, he didn't even register that his leg was no longer giving him the twinge that was the omnipresent reminder of all of the most foolish decisions he'd ever made. Actually, at the rate he was moving, it should have been throbbing in agony, but it wasn't – not that Clark noticed. Gone, too, was the limp that advertized to a world that needed no reminder that he was not the man he had once been destined to be.

Staggering slightly as he bolted out onto the lawn of his family's home, he stared in open-mouthed amazement at the scene in front of him. The house that he knew so well – the one he had returned to not twenty minutes before – was gone. Though the structure in front of him resembled the only home he'd ever known, it was distinctly different. The yellow paint his father meticulously and almost reverently reapplied every few years was chipped and peeling. The banister on the front steps was askew, as if one more strong wind might blow it over. Boards were nailed over the doors and windows, though enough space showed through the boards that he could see clearly that glass no longer remained in several of the portals.

"Mom…? Dad…?" he muttered weakly, then he bolted toward the steps. The boards covering the door came off easily in his hands; he was standing in the middle of the living room in mere moments. However, the inside was hardly more comforting than the outside. Though the furniture remained, various pieces were covered with drop clothes, and everything was coated with a heavy layer of dust. The structure might have looked like the home he knew, but it was obvious that his parents were no longer in residence. In fact, nobody had lived here for a very, very long time.

Fear tightened the back of his throat as he turned to face the woman who was gingerly stepping through the open front door behind him. "Chloe, what…?" he began, but before he could even voice the question, he knew the answer.

Closing his eyes, he remembered those words that had so foolishly and irrepressibly sprung to mind as the light washed over him. _I wish…_

This was his fault.

_I wish I could undo the mistakes I've made. _

His doing.

_I wish I could find such happiness._

Just as he'd unintentionally brought another man's fiancée to his world, he'd unwittingly sent himself somewhere else.

_I wish I could find the woman I was destined to love,_ he'd willed, every bit as desperately as he'd longed to send Lois back to the man awaiting her.

"Oh, god," he moaned as his eyes fluttered open and he dropped his head into his hands. "What have I done?" What was this world he had unintentionally sent himself to? And, perhaps more importantly still, now that the crystal had shattered, how was he ever going to get home?


	2. Restored

**A/N:**Sorry about the delay on this. I wanted to havea chapter up a week, roughly, but I had a family emergency that called me out of town for a while. Everything's fine now; my family is all well - but the house is in pretty bad shape. I suppose fires will do that. Anyway, I'm scrambling to get back on track now!

To that end, I wanted to post the next chapter. A little shorter than I'd intended, but I'm already working on the next:D

**Restored**

Unsurprisingly, it took Clark some time to explain the sudden change in circumstances – or at least the suspicions he had about the change in circumstances – to Chloe. It was both fortunate and somewhat miraculous that she didn't panic when he told her that the two of them were likely in an alternate dimension and might never find their way home. In fact, she took the entire conversation in stride, only commenting with a shaky smile, "Okay, so…I'm not going to pretend like I really know what's going on, but I guess I'll just consider this an adventure of sorts. I mean, it beats studying for exams." When her joke fell flat, she cleared her throat and said a little more forcefully, "So…I just want to make sure I have this straight. My Lois died, and you – and not your dad – somehow brought another world's Lois to our world to make up for it, only then you had to send her back, and now we're in a totally different world to find a completely different Lois so that you and I can go home?"

"Er…that pretty much sums it up, yes," Clark agreed weakly.

"Just checking," she said in a voice that indicated exactly how insane this all was. Clark couldn't entirely argue the point. With a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and asked, "Okay, so where do we begin?"

Clark was almost pathetically grateful that she hadn't flown into hysterics, though he supposed her ability to process and accept everything that had happened probably had a lot to do with the fact that she'd recently met her cousin from another reality. Getting to know a Lois who hadn't died on a mountaintop had no doubt helped Chloe come to grips with the fact it was possible that she and Clark had been transported to an alternate dimension themselves.

Of course, not even this awareness helped Clark figure out what to do next. He hadn't exactly planned any of this, and he certainly hadn't planned on Chloe grabbing his arm at the last minute and thus coming along for the ride. "Well…," he began hesitantly, "I guess…we're definitely going to have to find Lois, since that's why I was sent here, but for all we know, she could be living in another state. So…I think maybe…maybe we should find out what happened to my parents." In all honesty, that probably wasn't going to help them find Lois, but Clark really needed to know why the farm was abandoned, the house boarded up and left in such a condition.

After pondering the matter a little more, he added, "We should also see if we can find out what happened to me, definitely…that is, the me from this world. And I think it would probably be a good idea to find out what the you from this world is up to, as well." In his own world, Clark hadn't really come to appreciate how hard it must have been for Lois to keep the various Clarks, Chloes, Loises, and so on straight in her conversation until this moment, but now he realized how easily a simple five minute conversation could be a headache in the making.

Chloe's eyebrows arched as she asked skeptically, "You think that's going to help us find our way home? Because I'm not sure it will, and…I don't know. I'm just not sure I want to find out what the other me is doing. What if she has a totally lame – or at least an incredibly boring – life? I really don't know that I want to find out that, had things been different, I might have spent my life killing eighty hours a week in a cubicle as a…a fact checker or a research librarian or something."

"Yeah, I know," he agreed. Truth be told, he wasn't entirely certain he wanted to know too much about his other self, either. "But, still…I think we need to know about our other selves if for no other reason than to avoid them. I mean, I'm not sure about you, but I think I'd be pretty freaked out if I ran into myself on the street one day. Or, at least, I would have been a couple of weeks ago. And I really don't want to deal with all the problems that would cause right now, do you?" He chose not to explain that he used to have powers, and if the Clark Kent in this world hadn't decided to give them up as he had, freaking out the most powerful man alive might have dire consequences. When she still didn't look entirely convinced, he added, "Plus, I don't know if this is how things really work, but I've seen _Timecop_ a couple of times, and there was this thing about paradoxes…"

Chloe chuckled and shook her head. "Okay, okay! Never let it be said that Jean-Claude Van Damme movies don't have educational value. I guess you're probably right and we shouldn't take any chances." With a sigh, she looked around the room. "Well, I don't think we're going to find the answers we're looking for here, so I suppose we should head into town. Any thoughts on how we're going to get there?"

She had a point. Unlike Lois, neither of them had been in a car when they'd been transported over to this world, so they didn't bring one with them. Clark figured there was a possibility that either his dad's old truck or his old motorcycle were still around the farm somewhere. However, given the dilapidation of the farmhouse, it had been quite some time since anyone had been in residence, so it was unlikely that either vehicle would be fully functioning. 

"Not really," he said with a scowl. "I'd suggest hitchhiking, but there aren't too many people who come out this way very often. I guess we'll just have to walk, which, with my leg, could take us all day."

With a sigh, he rose to the position he'd taken on the cloth-covered couch while he'd explained the situation to his companion. "I guess we'd better…get…started." Though the beginning of his sentence had been said with grudging acceptance, his voice trailed off at the end. Now, that was strange. His leg hadn't hurt as he'd risen to his feet – and since ignoring the twinge of pain that usually accompanied such a motion had become second nature to him, it was distinctly odd that he hadn't had to do so now. As a matter of fact, he'd probably only noticed the lack of pain because he'd been thinking about his leg at the time.

Moving very slowly, Clark sat down and then rose to his feet again. Still, there was no pain, not even the tiniest twinge of awareness. "Uh…Chloe…," he began awkwardly as he froze in place as if afraid that the slightest movement might undo whatever spell had fallen over him. "Did you notice, by any chance, whether or not I was limping a minute ago?"

A tiny frown line appeared between his companion's eyebrows as she replied, "Uh…no. I mean, I didn't notice, but I wasn't really paying attention. Why?"

"No…no…no reason!" he finally managed to answer lightly in a voice that sounded like he was seriously deprived of oxygen. "Just give me a minute, okay?"

Moving slightly slower than icebergs tended to travel over great land masses, Clark lowered himself down onto the couch again and bent to pull up the pant leg to his jeans. He caught his breath as he pulled the fabric up each arduous inch, and though he tried not read too much into the fact that he'd managed to stand without pain, he couldn't help but be slightly hopeful about what he would find (or, rather, not find) when he uncovered his knee.

At long last, he pulled the leg of the jeans up high enough to examine his knee, and it was just as he'd thought – and, truth be told, feared. There was no longer any scar curving down from his thigh; the memento he'd carried in the years since his last failed attempt to play superhero had disappeared. "Oh, god…" he whispered in a choked voice.

An astonishing mixture of emotions flooded him, and he had to close his eyes and breathe deeply through his nose in order to quell the sudden spate of nausea that hit. He didn't know how to feel at this revelation – certainly he was relieved and overjoyed that the infirmity he'd resigned himself to carrying throughout the rest of his days had disappeared. On the other hand, he was terrified and uncertain if he was really up to the challenge that lay ahead.

Lois had called him Superman, but he hadn't truly believed that wearing that mantle would ever be possible, not for him. Now, however, it seemed he was one step closers to being the man she'd envisioned and one step farther from being the man he'd told himself for years that he had always wanted to be. 

If his leg injury was gone, were his powers back? Could he bend steel with his bare hands or walk through a fire unscathed? Could he jump to the top of the tallest building in Metropolis? Could he set the room on fire with one unguarded glance? It had taken him years to adapt to the powers he had once had, to get them under control. It had taken very little time at all to put most of them out of his mind, to remember that he no longer had to check himself every time he gave his parents a hug or shook someone's hand. How easy it had been to lose himself in the fact that he could share a romantic moment with his girlfriend without having to worry that he might set the room on fire if he wasn't careful. In fact, with the exception of his invulnerability, he hadn't really missed having his powers at all.

The very idea that they might be back now completely floored him, and he sat in silence for a long while, processing the thought. In the end, he realized that he had to know for sure. Had his leg miraculously healed in the journey across realities, or was he once again twice the man he'd learned how to be?

"Chloe, I need your help," he said through clenched teeth as he sat motionless on the couch. He was no longer certain why he was trying to stay so still – was he afraid that one wrong moment might bring the full force of his powers back to him or take any chance of ever getting them back away for good? "I…I need you to find me something. It doesn't matter what it is, really, but…uh…something metal would be good. Something hard. The harder it is to break, the better. Check the…check around the fireplace and see if you see a poker or something around there. If not, I need you to look around a little until you find something, okay?"

"Clark, what's wrong?" she asked in concern as she stepped toward him. "Are you feeling okay? Does your leg hurt? I'm not sure that there's any aspirin lying around anywhere, but I might be able to find you…"

"No," he interjected, cutting her off. "I'm…my leg's okay. And I'll explain everything to you in a minute, okay? I just need you to do this favor for me first." When she looked at him in confusion but didn't seem inclined to do as he'd asked, he added, "Please."

"O-okay," she agreed with a halfhearted shrug as she began her quest. When she didn't find anything in the living room, she walked into the rear of the house to continue her search. The entire time, Clark sat motionless on the sofa, swallowing heavily as numerous possibilities careened inside his skull. 

Finally, Chloe returned with a dingy old mop she'd managed to unearth from somewhere, and she offered it to him with an apologetic smile. "Sorry, it's the best I could do. It's pretty sturdy, though; I tried to break it in half, but I couldn't do it."

With trembling hands, Clark reached out and grabbed the wooden handle. "Thanks," he breathed. "This'll do fine." Closing his eyes, he sucked in a deep breath and grabbed the wooden pole in both hands and then, as easily as snapping a toothpick, he broke the mop handle in two. That he could do it so easily was almost a surprise.

"Okay," he said firmly as he stared at the broken grain of the wood. "Okay," he repeated again, trying to inject a slightly more confident air into the word. "Okay," he said for a third time. "Well, this is unexpected."

"Uh…yeah," Chloe said. "If I knew you were just going to break it in two, I'd have grabbed you the broom and saved you the trouble. It already had a broken handle."

He shook his head. "No, I wasn't…Chloe, there's something I need to tell you, and when I tell you this, I really need you to not freak out. Okay?"

Chloe's eyebrows shot upward. "You mean you have something to tell me that's going to be harder to swallow than the fact that we just travelled to another dimension to find the woman you were destined to love, who just happens to be another version of the cousin I lost when she was sixteen?" she asked skeptically.

"As hard as it is to believe, yeah," Clark said with a nod. "Okay, look…you remember how Lois told you that the two of us had to see my father and you couldn't come along? No…wait. That's not how I want to…Okay, you know how…uh…you know how Lois said that she knew a man in her world who was…um…well…that he could fly?"

Nodding, she said slowly, in a voice that indicated clearly that she was not seeing where he was going with this. "Yeah."

"Okay, well…" He really had to stop saying okay. He was beginning to sound like he had a bi-syllabic nervous disorder. "She was talking about me."

He couldn't entirely hold the snort that Chloe emitted against her; his statement did sound a bit absurd, particularly coming from him. "Yeah, right," she said, rolling her eyes. "You know, I appreciate that you're trying to alleviate some of the tension in the situation, but I really don't think that now is the time to be cracking jokes."

"Chloe…it's true," he said and then had to pause so he could swallow heavily. "I'm going to tell you something that you can't tell anyone. Ever. I-It's important. I know we don't know each other very well, but Lois swore that I could trust you and I'm going to have to take her at her word because we don't really have another choice. I'm…different." He couldn't quite get up the nerve to confess he was an alien, but considering the fact that he had his work cut out for him without adding that little bombshell to the mix, he didn't think it mattered.

"There are things…things that I can do…well, I could do…I can do them again, I guess…" He shook his head as if trying to get everything to fall into place. "When I was younger, I used to have these abilities that were…well, they were remarkable, really. I was really strong and faster than you can believe. There was almost nothing that could hurt me physically. But then…I lost my powers. It's a long story how, and none of that really matters right now, because the point is that…I have them back. At least, I think I have them back. I'm pretty sure."

He watched as Chloe chewed on this inside of her lower lip as she watched him silently, and he wondered what was going through her mind. Actually, he didn't have to wonder all that much; from the look on her face, he could tell that she clearly believed that he'd somehow shaken a screw loose in the trip across dimensions and so it was going to be up to her to get the both of them home where they belonged.

Before she could suggest a couple very nice doctors he could talk to, if they even existed in this world, Clark rose awkwardly to his feet – though he knew he no longer had to make allowances for his injury, it was going to take some time to train his body to remember that fact. "Look, I can show you," he said as he headed purposefully toward the front door.

He knew it was absolutely vital that he convince Chloe of the truth of his words as quickly as possible – even as the two of them searched for Lois, he was going to have to teach himself how to control his powers all over again. It wasn't going to be easy, and there was no way he was going to be able to do it alone. 

Clark didn't even bother to check to see if Chloe was trailing after him as he hit the front porch; he cast a glance around the yard. There had to be _something_. The problem was, he wasn't sure which of his powers to test first. For a second, he considered trying to jump over the barn, but he was still nervous about putting too much pressure on his newly healed leg. He thought about testing his speed, but that would be a strain on his leg, as well. Furthermore, with as out of practice as he was, he might not be able to stop until he'd hit Metropolis.

He was loathe to try his heat vision, because he wasn't looking forward to accidentally burning down the house he'd grown up in. If he used his x-ray vision, there was every chance he'd creep Chloe out. While proving he was invulnerable would probably be an easy task, he had been vulnerable for far too long to be overly eager to attempt to injure himself just yet. So that left strength, but he didn't see anything in the immediate area that would be suitable for a practical demonstration. Where was his father's old tractor when he needed it? Maybe it was in the barn, he concluded.

Poking his head through the open doorway, he peered back into the shadowy recesses of the barn and saw the object he was looking for. As he walked towards it, he saw that it was as broken down as everything else on the farm – at least two of its tires had gone flat, causing it to tilt at an askew angle, and almost its entire body was covered in rust. Trailing his hand over the hood to the engine, Clark wondered once again what had happened in this place. What had happened to his parents, that they would leave the life they loved so much behind?

Putting the thought out of his mind for a moment, he turned to Chloe, who was still looking at him like she thought he might be a few tacos short of a combination platter. "Okay, you ready?" he asked as he walked around to the side of the tractor and hooked both hands under his base. Bracing himself, he tried to remember to distribute his weight evenly as he lifted and to not lift too high too fast – he didn't want to send the tractor flying, after all. It was a little hard to remember to do all of these things, however, as a little voice in the back of his mind was occupied with hoping that he wouldn't throw his damn back out to heap further humiliation upon himself when this failed.

Looking at the skeptical expression on Chloe's face, Clark tried to ignore the doubt that told him to give up now while he was ahead. His leg was miraculously healed; he shouldn't tempt fate. But that was exactly what he was doing in this world, after all. Tempting fate. So, before he could waste another second doubting himself, he lifted.

The tractor came easily off the ground, and Clark couldn't quite suppress an exultant cry as he held it high. It had been so long – and he'd been so desperate to put his "otherness" behind him – he'd forgotten the heady feeling that came from the wonder of everything he had once been able to do so easily. For a few seconds, he reveled in his newly returned power, the awareness of a thousand different possibilities that stretched before him – the knowledge that he was maybe one step closer to being the man he'd seen in Lois's eyes.

One look at Chloe's face, however, reminded him of every reason he'd given his remarkable abilities away. She looked stunned and scared, and she took an unsteady step away from him as he slowly lowered the tractor to the ground. "Oh, my god," she breathed unevenly, and he saw her scamper back a few more feet as he scooted around the side of the tractor to approach her. He stopped in his tracks when she lifted her hands defensively and demanded, "Who…what _are_ you?"


	3. Practice

**A/N:** To all who read any of my fics, I need to warn you that any chapters I produce for the next couple of months are going to be short and possibly undergo some type of delay. We're in crunch time at school now, and it's a rare moment when I can squeeze in a little fun writing around massive research papers that determine the entirety of my grade for any particular class.

But now, that said, I bring you...

**Practice**

Clark took a deep breath and tried to think of a way to keep Chloe calm and stop her from panicking – not that he would blame her if she did. She'd had a lot to process over the past week, and everyone had their breaking point.

"It's okay," he said softly when he saw that she looked like she was about to bolt. "I'm not going to hurt you." Once the tractor was again safely back on solid ground, he scooted quickly around the side and took a slow step towards her. "I know this is a lot to take in, but it's still me."

"You…what…how…?" Chloe stuttered nervously, and with a grimace, Clark tried to figure out how to explain. Before he could find the answer, however, she swallowed heavily and said, "This is…it's like what Lois was talking about, isn't it? The Wall of Weird? The…the meteor rocks doing…that they had an effect on people in this town? I thought she was just…I never really believed…"

He winced. "It's…related to that, I suppose. Yeah." It was probably not the best time to explain that he was an alien from another planet, and those meteor rocks were tiny pieces of home.

As silence fell between them, Clark tried to be patient and allow Chloe to come to her own conclusions. As eager as he was to get started on finding his parents and Lois, he didn't want to push the woman in front of him. Finally, she sighed. "I don't really want to know more than that right now, do I?" she asked wryly, as if she was well aware that the situation was even still much more complicated than she knew.

Shaking his head, he returned the smile. "It's a long story."

He could see her visibly struggling with what he'd revealed to her and the implication that it was only the tip of the iceberg, and he held his breath as he waited to find out what she'd do next. He didn't know how he could do what needed to be done without her help, but any offer to help had to be her decision – he couldn't pressure her. Finally, she squared her shoulders and gave him a brave nod, though there was still fear behind her eyes. "O-okay," she said softly. "I think I have enough to process right now, so we'll just leave the rest for later. I…uh…so, what do we do next?"

Clark's shoulders bowed with relief. She clearly wasn't quite accepting of what he'd just revealed to her, but she was trying. He was unsurprised – and yet relieved – that Lois had been right in her assessment of her cousin's character.

"I do think we should try to make our way into town. I really do want to find out what happened to my parents, and now that I have my abilities back, it'll be even more important to find them. They've already been through this with me once, so they'll probably be able to help me get used to my abilities a little faster than I can adjust on my own. And then we're going to have to track Lois down, but I think we'll just have to tackle this one step at a time."

Nodding, Chloe looked around. "So, now that our conversation has come full circle, the question still remains. We don't seem to have a car, so how are we going to get anywhere?"

Clark cleared his throat nervously. "Well, I can run really fast. Maybe I could…er…carry you?"

He saw his companion open her mouth to protest, but then she closed it and shook her head. "I think it's best if I just don't ask too many questions right now. But you said you need to get used to your abilities again. No offense, but I'd rather not put my life in your hands while you're still feeling a little bit rusty."

She was giving him such an exaggerated look of disgruntled skepticism that he gave a tiny snort of laughter. His humor, which was possibly inappropriate under the circumstances, coaxed a mirroring smile from his companion, if the expression on her face was a little shaky. Since he was feeling a little skittish about his proposed plan himself, he didn't protest.

"Okay, I'll go practice. I'll be back in a couple of minutes," he said as he led her outside. He watched as she nodded and walked back into the house, and then he turned and looked down the road leading to town. Once upon a time, this used to be so easy. He wouldn't even have to think about the logistics of it; he would discover he was late for the bus and just take off, running so fast he was a blur, all the way to school. He'd never really had to think about what he was doing, or how. He had taken his speed, and so many of his other abilities, for granted, always thinking about how they made him different from the people around him instead of thinking about how wonderful these things he had once done had been – and how much he'd really enjoyed doing them, from time to time.

Now he was no longer so thoughtless about the abilities it seems he had regained. He was afraid of what the use of his abilities would do – not only in terms of how they may impact the people about him but also about how they would impact himself. What if he lost his abilities? What if he didn't really have his invulnerability back and he injured his leg in this test run?

Well, one thing was certain. He would never know for sure if he didn't try. With a deep breath, he shifted his weight and began to run. He had already covered at least three football fields before he realized that his attempt was successful – his speed had returned. Six football fields' worth of ground later, he realized that he wasn't experienced any pain. And after another dozen football fields of ground, he remembered just how much _fun _he used to have with his abilities.

Leaning forward slightly, Clark pushed himself a little harder; he had not been running as fast as he could, out of fear of what it would do to his leg. He let out an exultant cry as the wind whipped through his hair and the ground flew beneath his feet. It was the most incredible feeling in the world and, for a moment, he was convinced that if he just pushed himself a little harder, he might take off, fly up into the sky, leave the world behind.

As the thought struck, he realized that he'd completely lost track of the purpose for the exercise; he was halfway to Nebraska already. Straightening, he tried to slow down, but he tried to apply the brakes too quickly. He was still moving faster than a normal man could when he somehow tripped over his own feet and fell, plowing a small crater into the soft ground by the road as he skidded to a stop.

Laying there on the ground, Clark sucked in a deep breath and held it as the dust and dirt settled around him. _Please_, he prayed with heartfelt desperation. _Please_. Then, rolling over, he let his eyes flutter open and stared up at the fluffy white clouds in the sky as he tried to gather the will to look down. In his mind, he was remembering those first few heartbreaking days in the hospital, when he'd tried to move his leg but shattered bones prevented his body from responding. He remembered the endless hours in mindless agony, the unendurable stretch of eons spent learning how to walk again. He couldn't go through that again.

His breath caught somewhere in the back of his throat, Clark finally gained the courage to look down at his legs and then, very slowly, he wiggled his feet back and forth. Both responded, and so he heaved a heavy sigh of relief and brought himself slowly to his feet. Still, he found that his fears were not completely erased. What if the fates, who had so capriciously decided to grant him his powers, had decided to take them once more after watching him fall?

Biting his lip hard enough to turn the skin white, Clark stepped forward with his left leg and slowly, excruciatingly slowly, transferred his weight onto his once-injured leg. As he shifted his weight forward, his leg buckled underneath him, sending him almost to the ground and he let out a quiet sob of desperation and disbelief. It couldn't be…it wasn't possible! Squeezing his eyes shut, he sucked in a few deep breaths through his nose and tried to retain control over the emotions that were crashing over him in waves.

That was when he realized that, though he had almost collapsed, he had felt no pain on his trip down. In the past, when his leg would buckle beneath him, it would always send an intense shaft of agony through his body, a constant reminder that he was no longer even half the man he had once been. Straightening slowly, Clark clenched his hands into fists at his sides and resolved to try again.

This time, when he stepped forward with his previously injured leg, it held his weight, not seeming the least bit inclined to buckle under the strain, and Clark let out a relieved sigh. It had been nothing more than his fear that had caused him to buckle before; his body was still whole.

And that meant it was time to try again. He couldn't let his fear drive him, he couldn't afford to crumble under the weight of it. After jogging forward a few steps to ensure that his leg was indeed not going to collapse under him, Clark set off again. This time, he managed to put on the brakes and come to a stop only about four miles past his house, and though he still stumbled when trying to come to a complete stop, he caught himself at the last moment and didn't fall. After three more trips back and forth between the outskirts of Smallville's town proper and home, he finally felt confident enough with the handle he had on his speed that he was willing to attempt a trip with a passenger in his arms.

Returning to the farmhouse in an easy lope, Clark jogged up the porch stairs and let himself in through the front door. It never failed to unnerve him, seeing the house he had grown up in, so dilapidated and forgotten. When he looked around and didn't immediately see his unwitting companion on this journey, he called her name and heard her call out for him from the room above.

Out of habit, he approached the stairs with a distinct feeling of dread, but it turned out that he didn't have to try to breach that particular hurdle. Chloe came down to join him, a small stack of items in her arms. She was a little breathless when she hit the bottom step, and she offered him a smile that was much more genuine than she'd given him twenty minutes before.

"Hey," she said brightly. "While you were gone, I got to thinking that we're going to need to come up with some sort of disguise if we don't want to be recognized. In Smallville, I'll probably be more or less okay, but you're going to be a problem. You're not exactly the type to blend in with your surroundings, you know? There isn't much to go on here, particularly since we don't know what the Other You wears to know how to dress you differently, but I found some things that might help. And…what happened to you?"

Looking down, Clark realized with some degree of shock that he was covered in dirt. "I…uh…fell."

"I guess," she drawled with a smirk. "Well, happily for you, I found some clothes that will probably be your size, since I'm pretty sure they were yours. They were in a big box marked "Clark" and everything!" Clark gave the obligatory eye-roll at such sarcasm. Plowing ahead, she continued, "Anyway, I found a shirt and a clean pair of khakis for you, which is apparently a much better thing than I realized. Also…," whipping something out of her stack, "I found these."

"My glasses!" he cried in surprise. He hadn't seen those in years. When he saw her eyebrows arch, he explained, "I had an accident once and lost my eyesight for a while, and when I was getting it back, I had to wear these."

"Well, that's convenient, because now they can be used as part of a disguise," she said brusquely as she shoved the glasses into his hand. "And I also tracked down a couple of baseball caps for us to wear. Do you want to wear the one with the logo for the Metropolis Sharks or the Blȕdhaven Bengals?"

"The Sharks," he said quickly, as he grabbed the hat out of her hands. "I played on the team, after all."

Chloe shook her head in amusement, but she said, "Okay, well, I guess that's pretty much it. Since I don't know what the Other Me looks like in this world, I figured I'd wear this baseball cap, and I tracked down a pair of sunglasses to wear. So I think as soon as you get changed, we'll be ready to go."

Relieved that they finally seemed to be getting somewhere, Clark raced into the other room to change and then came back. "You ready to go?" he asked, and though Chloe still looked a little nervous as she clutched her cap and sunglasses to her chest, she slung her arm around his neck as he cautiously lifted her into his arms.

And then he was off, going only at about of a third his maximum speed. He didn't want to freak her out too much. Even at that speed, however, it only took a couple of minutes before he hit the outskirts of town, and then he came to a halt and lowered her gently back onto her own feet. Though as soon as he put her down, she skittered away from him a couple of feet, he pretended not to notice and she pretended not to have done so.

They walked into town in strained silence, both undoubtedly lost in their own thoughts. By tacit agreement, they made their way toward the Talon, but they hadn't even gotten halfway down the town's main strip before they realized there was a crucial flaw in their plan. They didn't find the Talon where it was supposed to be; a large parking garage was standing in its place.

Glancing up at Clark, Chloe suggested, "The Beanery?"

"I suppose so," he said with a shrug. They turned together and walked towards Smallville's other coffee house, and Clark held the door for his companion as moved to precede him inside. When she was passing by him, however, he reached out with one hand and laid it gently on her arm, pulling it away quickly when she jumped at the sudden movement and threw a startled look his way.

"I just…thank you," he said softly. "I know this is a lot…I mean, I know how hard this entire situation must be for you to deal with…everything you've had to deal with this week. But…you're here helping me, when you don't have to be. Just because you accidentally grabbed my arm at just the wrong moment, when I was being brought here. And because of what Lois had meant to you, I'm sure. I…I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help."

Chloe smiled. "Don't mention it, Clark," she said softly. "Just…bring my cousin back to me, okay?" Without waiting for his reply, she brushed past him and he followed her inside. "Come on, Clark. Let's get those answers you're looking for."


	4. Gone

**Gone**

As they approached the counter, Chloe grabbed hold of Clark's sleeve and gave it a tug. "Listen, maybe you should let me do the talking. You work on being inconspicuous; try to blend into the background." With a quirk of her lips, she let her gaze travel down the length of his body, and he knew what she was thinking. At over six feet, there weren't many backgrounds he could blend into easily. As if amused by her thoughts, she gave a slight chuckle. "Well, at least try not to talk if you don't have to. We shouldn't take the risk that someone might recognize you if you call attention to yourself."

Nodding his assent, Clark shortened his stride so that he walked a half a step behind her, letting her take the lead. Then, remembering Lois's world in another reality, he slumped his shoulders and lowered his head, trying to make himself as unassuming as possible. If it worked for the Clark in her world, it might work for him here.

"Excuse me," he heard Chloe say, and he stopped walking a few steps behind her. Shifting his body to the side, he stuck his hands in his pockets and focused his attention on the conversation. Chloe approached the bar, where a visibly bored barista stood, snapping a piece of bubblegum between her teeth. "We were wondering if you could help us with something. My friend and I are looking for a family from this area, the Kents. Do you happen to know where we could find them?"

The barista's expression didn't change at the question, and though her gaze did shoot towards Clark, it travelled over him dismissively before returning to Chloe. The tiniest bit of curiosity flickered over her face as she asked, "Oh, yeah? What are you looking for them for?"

"It's…uh…" Chloe stammered, clearly searching for an excuse. "We're doing a…um…"

"Genealogy," Clark offered, and Chloe threw him a grateful look over her shoulder.

"I'm a project for…uh…a sociology class I'm taking at Met U., and the final is this huge genealogy project. Pretty lame, huh?" Chloe offered a shaky smile with this excuse, and Clark tried to resist the urge to copy it. He wasn't entirely sure that any sociology class would assign such a project, but maybe the barista wouldn't know that.

If the barista thought this was unusual, she cleverly hid her suspicions under a veneer of supreme disinterest. "Yeah, okay," she drawled, slumping against the counter again. "Well, the Kents don't live here anymore."

"Any idea where I can find them?" Chloe asked, a bit desperately. When the barista shrugged and snapped her gum again, Clark could swear the petite blonde in front of him had to stifle the urge to reach across the counter and throttle the girl.

Luckily, she was rescued by any homicidal urgings when a man who appeared to be in his late seventies spoke up from the far end of the bar. "You say you were looking for the Kents? Jonathan and Martha Kent?" At the answering nod, he scratched his cheek thoughtfully and continued, "Like Amber there said, the Kents don't live around here anymore." He looked reflective for a moment then said sadly, "It's too bad, what happened. Jonathan was a good man."

"Was?" Clark interjected through the tightening in his throat. "What…what do you mean? What happened to him?"

The man looked surprised. "Oh, well, I guess you're not from around here." With a sigh, he shifted his weight and leaned back in his chair, an oldtimer settling into a story. "Nobody really knows, actually. It was the strangest thing. One day they found him unconscious…there are caves in the area, and they found him there. The doctors said he probably had a heart attack or something, but…I don't know; there was still something damn strange about it all. Anyway, he was in a coma or something by the time they got him to the hospital." Looking sadly in Chloe's direction, he finished, "He was like that for a while; a year at least. And Martha…she went to see him every day after the accident, but he never woke up. After a while, he just slipped away."

"And their son?" Chloe blurted before Clark had a chance to ask. "What happened to their son?"

"Clark? Well, that's the other curious thing. He disappeared that day, the day Jonathan was found in the cave. Gone without a trace; not even Martha knew what had happened to her boy. It had to have been terrible for her – her son gone, her husband left like that. I don't think anyone's seen Clark since." His story clearly coming to an end, the old man sighed. "If you want to know the truth, I don't figure he'll ever be found alive. I knew the Kent boy a little…of course, in a small town, everybody knows everybody. He was a good kid. I can't imagine that boy would ever have left his family like that, not if there was any other choice."

Clark felt like he couldn't breathe. For the first time, he was beginning to feel like he really understood what Lois had gone through that day at his parents' house – taken from everyone she knew and thrust into a world in which she was dead. "W-where's Mo-Martha now?" he rasped.

The old man lifted one shoulder and let it fall once more, a casual shrug. "She stuck around for a while, but she didn't stay long. With her husband and her boy gone, there was nobody left to work the farm, and she couldn't do it on her own. She tried, of course, for Jonathan's sake I think – and I think because she had hope her boy would come back one day. But farming is dangerous work. There was an accident one day, and she was hurt. By the time she got out of the hospital…well, it was no secret that things had been tight at the best of times for the Kents. With the hospital bills and all…the land was foreclosed on within the year. The Luthors tried to help her out, I understand – the boys were friends, Lex and Clark. I think they bought the land and tried to give it to her as a gift, but she wouldn't take their charity. If you ask me, I don't think she could stand to stick around any longer. I've never met a family more devoted to each other than the Kents were; I'm sure it tore her up inside, losing everyone like that. Anyway, she packed a suitcase and left one day, and she's never been back."

Clark felt like he couldn't breathe. It was too much to take in all at once, and he felt his body begin to sway. Taking a step to the side, he lowered his body into a chair and concentrated on not throwing up as Chloe looked at him in concern. "D-Jonathan Kent…where is he buried?"

For the first time, the old man seemed to register Clark's presence, and he seemed to be confused that a stranger was taking this news so personally. "You okay, son?" he asked instead of responding to the question.

"My friend's been sick," Chloe hastily explained, placing her hand on his shoulder and giving it a reassuring squeeze. "The flu. He's getting better, but he still gets a little lightheaded sometimes."

The old man seemed to buy the explanation, and he gave a quick nod. "Rose Hill Cemetery," he offered, responding to Clark's earlier question. "If you want to go see the grave for that project of yours, the cemetery's not hard to find. Just take a left when you leave here, and just outside of town, you'll come across a road on your right. Take it for about…oh…six minutes and the entrance will be on your left."

Clark listened as Chloe offered her thanks, and then she put a hand under his elbow and exerted a little pressure, trying to get him to his feet. Though he still felt like he was going to be sick, he stood and started walking towards the door. He had to go see his father's grave, he decided. He'd never believe any of this was real until he saw it for himself.

"I don't understand, Chloe," he said as they walked back out into the sunlight. Clark didn't feel the warmth of the sun beating down on him; he felt like an icy breeze had cut through to the center of him and chilled him from within. "Why are things so different here? My father…why did he…he wasn't supposed to die like that!"

"I know," she said, and when she stopped in front of him and gazed into his face, he saw sympathy, confusion, and concern in her blue eyes. "We'll figure this out, Clark. Okay? I promise you." Swallowing heavily, he tried to nod at her in assent but it was hard to move. He felt like he was disconnected from his body. "Hey…listen to me," she said more urgently when it was clear he hadn't been particularly reassured. "We will. We'll figure out what happened here and why things are different."

"That won't bring him back," he said in a voice barely above a whisper.

"I know," she said softly. "But right now, it's the best we can do."

Clark tore his gaze away from her and stared with sightless eyes down the road to the cemetery. He didn't know what he expected of her; she could bring the Jonathan Kent back to life in this world no more than she could bring their world's Lois Lane back from the dead. "Okay," he said heavily. "I-I need to stop by the cemetery to…to see…" He couldn't finish his sentence. "We'll figure out where to go from there, okay?"

Chloe nodded. "Yeah, sure. Um…hold on a minute, okay?" Before he could respond, she'd ducked back inside the coffeeshop. When she returned a few minutes later, she was frowning and seemed to be lost in thought. Clark didn't press her for an explanation; he had enough to worry about at the moment. They walked in silence together to the outskirts of town, and then Chloe turned to Clark and wrapped her arm around his shoulders and didn't bat an eye as he lifted her and sped towards the cemetery. He would have recognized that she was clearly getting accustomed to the idea of his powers if he didn't have so much else weighing on his mind.

As they stood side by side in front of the open wrought iron gates, Chloe grabbed his arm and gave it a quick squeeze. Nodding towards a nearby bench, she said, "You go on. I'll sit over there and wait for you."

Clark appreciated her consideration, that she knew this was something he wanted to do alone. As she walked away from him, he stepped forward through the gates and into the cemetery, in search of his father's tombstone.

He finally found it, located next to a large statue of an angel. Falling to his knees before the solid block of marble, he tore off his hat and glasses and tossed them aside before sweeping his fingers over the letters carved in stone. "Here lies Jonathan Kent, Beloved Husband and Father…" Clark felt his breath come in short gasps as his world fell away from him.

He had heard that the Jonathan Kent in Lois's world had been dead, and he recognized that his father would one day be taken from him. But somehow the thought of that had never seemed real to him. The thought of a world without his father in it was too alien, too repellent, and his brain couldn't and wouldn't wrap itself around the concept. It was like imagining a world without a sky; it was just too much for him to ever truly imagine.

But this Jonathan Kent _was_ gone, taken too soon from this world and his family. And Clark knew what the old man in the Beanery hadn't known. He knew what his father had been doing in the caves that day. He knew what had caused him to collapse, and where the Clark Kent of this world had gone.

He knew because he'd been there himself.

He opened his mouth to speak, but the words wouldn't come. What could he possibly say to this man to apologize for the mistakes a different Clark had made? How could he apologize for the fact that this Clark had never returned from that world between worlds, the infinite darkness filled with piercing bright light. The warmth of a long-forgotten memory, the chill of an alien existence. He remembered it all. And there were no words to apologize for what his own decisions had put his family through.

There was no atoning for the past; there was only looking to the future. So rather than try to find words that didn't exist to express his sorrow over what had once been lost, he made a promise instead. "I'll find her, Dad. I'll find Mom. I'll make sure she's okay." Then, as the whisper of his words faded away, his extraordinary sense of hearing kicked into gear and he heard someone start to speak from somewhere else in the cemetery.

Rising slowly to his feet, he tried to hone in on the speaker's exact location. Skirting around a headstone, he didn't even realize he'd left his disguise behind as he tried to follow the speaker's voice. "Hey, cous. It's me. Obviously. Um…okay, so, if you want to know the truth, I don't really know what I'm doing here. Big surprise, huh? But I…I came because…I know I haven't come by here nearly often enough, and I'm sorry about that. It's just…I suck at this, you know? This talking to thin air and hoping…anyway, I wanted to come because…" He heard the speaker pause. Walking around a large mausoleum, he saw her, a silhouette of a woman dressed in black against a sea of stone. She was standing before a slab of marble, her head bent as she spoke softly to the ground at her feet.

Lois.

He froze, not really hearing the words she was speaking as his brain tried to process the reality of her, right in front of him. It had hurt more than he could ever have imagined to have let her go once, but now she was before him again. And he didn't have the first clue of what to do next.

"I-it's over, baby," he heard her say, a tiny catch in her voice as she spoke words that didn't really register in his mind. "The bastard is dead. He died in prison, just like I promised."

On a ragged breath, he heard her continue, "I miss you, cous. I know…I know it sounds crazy, but I thought…I thought once it was over – once he was dead – this pain would go away. And I'm a little mad that it hasn't, actually. Wasn't it supposed to feel better, once he was brought to justice? But it…I have this friend. You'd like him, I think. Well, you'd either like him or you'd want to strangle him. Maybe a little bit of both, which I can definitely understand. Anyway, he told me…he said I might feel better if I came here and talked to you like this, but…

"Oh, this is ridiculous," she said in an exasperated tone as she threw her head back and looked up at the sky instead, raising her hands to her face to wipe stray tears away. "I know you can't hear me baby, but I wanted to tell you that it's over. It's finally over. And I…I miss you, Chloe. More than you would believe." With a sigh, she dropped her gaze to the ground and whispered, "Goodbye, baby."

He watched as she turned and made her way towards the front gates, and he knew he should follow her but he couldn't move. It was Lois, the woman he had been sent to find. But having come so far just for this moment, he found that he was suddenly afraid. He was reasonably certain that this world's Lois hadn't found this world's Clark, given what he'd heard at the Beanery. But what if…there were so many what ifs, but only one of them kept him rooted to the spot. What if he saw in her eyes what he had seen in another Lois's eyes – the certainty that he was so much less than the man she wanted, she needed, him to be?

He knew that he had been sent here to find her, but now that she was before him, he didn't know if he was up to the task. When he'd first met Lois not quite a week ago, she'd told him a story about a man who stood for something far greater than he had ever imagined. And he'd come to realize that he wanted to be that man, even as he doubted such a thing was possible.

He didn't know if he could face that again, seeing that knowledge in another Lois's eyes – the recognition, the disappointment, that he was far less than he had the potential to be. A poor woman's Superman.

The fear that gripped him at the thought of what would be revealed if he walked up to Lois now made it temporarily impossible for him to approach her, and he glanced down at himself self-consciously and ran his fingers anxiously through his hair. What would she see when she looked at him, he wondered. And would he ever be able to live up to that image?

_She doesn't know,_ he reminded himself. _She doesn't know about Superman. Clark Kent disappeared and never returned in this world. Remember?_ But the love the Lois he knew had so obviously shared for Clark had been such an integral part of her, he doubted he could ever think of her without also thinking of how she glowed when she talked about the man she loved. As much as he rationally knew that this woman wasn't likely to do the same – or, rather, if she did, it would be for a different man entirely – he couldn't fathom what it would be like. A Lois Lane not in love with another, better Clark Kent.

He was so lost in his own thoughts and fears that he foolishly didn't follow her as she began to walk away. When she was almost at the gate, however, he realized that this could be his only opportunity to speak with her. If he didn't stop her now, she was going to get away, and then he might never have the chance again.

"Lois!" he called but when she didn't hear him, he jogged after her. Of course, he could catch up easily but he didn't want to frighten her.

He had almost caught up to her when Chloe, who must have heard the approaching footsteps, looked up and saw the woman walking in her direction. "Lois?" he heard her whisper as she jumped to her feet. "Oh, my god, it is you!"

Clark was still a couple yards behind Lois when Chloe rushed forward to throw her arms around the other woman's neck, but she stopped at the last moment, a look of confusion on her face. Clark was confused at her sudden shift of mood until he heard Lois demand coldly, "I'm sorry…do I know you?"

"I-it's me…I…I don't…" Chloe shot a helpless gaze over Lois's shoulder in Clark's direction. She was clearly at a loss as to what to do next, and Clark couldn't blame her. This was all unfamiliar territory to him, as well. It was strange to see a woman who looked identical the one he had gotten to know over the past week, but he had to remember that she wasn't the same person.

"Lois…?" he began softly, and his breath caught in his throat as she turned to face him. For a second, she glanced vaguely in his direction, but then her gaze sharpened on his face and she gasped and staggered back a couple of steps.

"Y-you!" she snarled, and like a deer caught in headlights, Clark found himself rooted to the spot as she grabbed Chloe by the arm and pulled the other girl behind her, using her body as a shield. Raising her free hand in front of her, she gave him a halting gesture.

Clark was taken completely by surprise by her reaction, which was so far from what he had received in another world. "I don't…Why are you…" He tried to take a step forward, which caused her to take another couple of staggered steps backwards, towing Chloe along with her as she went.

"Stay back!" she barked. "I'm warning you…!" When her words stopped him in his tracks, she straightened and lifted her chin at a haughty angle as she glared at him. "You know, after you disappeared, everyone, including me, began to think maybe you weren't coming back. I suppose I should have known it was too good to be true."

From behind Lois, Clark could hear Chloe say in confusion, "I don't understand. Why are you…what's going on? Clark?"

Though Lois didn't take her eyes off the man in front of her, she turned her head a little to ask over her shoulder, "Who's Clark?"

"What are you talking about? He's Clark!" Chloe cried, scooting out from behind her human shield to gesture to the man in question.

With a slight shake to her head, Lois said emphatically, "No, that's Kal-El."

"Kal-who?" Chloe repeated in even deeper confusion.

"Actually, I'm both," Clark offered in explanation, and though he'd tried to keep his tone soft, he noticed Lois jump at the sound of his voice and her head snapped forward again.

"I don't know who you are, but trust me when I say you should stay away from him," she said, clearly still speaking to the woman beside her. "He's dangerous."

"He's my friend," Chloe protested, though her voice lacked conviction. Clark didn't know if this was due to her intense confusion – which he certainly shared – or if she was beginning to have doubts himself. "He…I don't…I don't understand. Why are you acting like this, Lois? You and he…the two of you…you're supposed to be…"

Chloe couldn't seem to express herself, but her stuttered words seemed to adequately convey Clark's own feelings. Why was this Lois so different from the one he'd just left behind? The Lois who had shown up on his front stoop not quite a week ago had been…she'd been warm, looking at him in such concern that he found it easy to believe she might grow to care about him.

This woman, however…there was no warmth in her demeanor as she looked at him. She was all sharp edges – even her appearance, with her hair swept severely back from her face into a ruthlessly controlled bun, made her seem unapproachable. She looked at him in clear distrust, even hatred, and every move he made, she tracked like a wild animal staring down a predator.

And then he realized. The shallowness of her breathing, the rapidity of her heart rate. The whiteness in her lips and the way she watched his every move. Lois wasn't looking at him in hatred.

She was absolutely terrified.


	5. Alien

**Alien**

Lois scoffed at the blonde woman's proclamation; the girl was either an idiot or she was fooling herself. She opened her mouth to say something snide, but her tone was softened slightly when she reminded herself that it hadn't been that long since she had felt similarly about the man in front of her. "He's nobody's friend," she said harshly, her voice strained as she tried to push away the thoughts of her own stupidity. In bald statement of fact, she continued, "Kal-El has no friends. He doesn't need anyone, certainly not a mere human."

How many times had she heard those words thrown back in her face when she tried to reach out to the man who, she had once felt, could have meant so much to her? More than she could possibly imagine. So why was he looking so surprised to hear them now?

She was still staring at the man in front of her, trying to deny the traitorous part of her that was whispering that there was something different about him. Something she couldn't put her finger on, but something that made him seem different than the man – or, rather, the alien – she had known. Pushing the thought aside, she tried to think of the best way to get away; this sudden reappearance and request for help had to be a trick. It _had _to be. But she wasn't going to take any part in it. Not again.

As Lois tried to find the words to tell the man in front of her that he could take whatever he was plotting and shove it, the woman behind her said softly, "He's mine…and he was yours."

For the first time, Lois turned her head to stare at the woman next to her, though she took a step back as she did so in order to keep Clark within her line of sight. God, she was the spitting image of the cousin she had loved, only this woman was all grown up and Chloe had never had the chance to do so. It was unnerving, uncanny, and deeply unsettling. Cursing her mind for playing tricks on her, Lois stared at the petite blonde woman for a long moment, and then she demanded softly, "Who are you?"

"It's me, Lois…Chloe," the woman in question offered with a tremulous smile. "Don't you recognize me?"

Lois let all emotion drain from her face as she took a step away from the woman at her side. "No, you're not," she said coldly. "I don't know who you are…I don't know what you think you're going to gain with all of this, but I'm going to tell you now that it's not going to work. You have a hell of a lot of nerve, pretending to be…I don't' know what your deal is, either of you. But if you're with him…" she jerked her chin in Kal-El's direction, "then I don't want to have anything to do with you." When the blonde looked stunned and somewhat hurt and started to take a step forward, Lois hissed, "Get the hell away from me!"

She was about to make a break for it when Kal-El spoke; she'd never heard that note of desperation in his voice before. For a second, she almost wavered, but then she remembered how easily he'd played her the last time. And what price she had paid. "Lois, please…" he said, and she stiffened when the voice that had grown so familiar spoke a word that was so alien to the man. Since when did he say please? Clearly unaware of her current turmoil, he continued, "You have to listen to me! I'm not sure…I don't know why you're…why you feel the way you do about Kal-El, but…I'm not that man. This is going to be hard for you to believe. Maybe impossible, I know. _Believe _me, I know how hard this is going to be for you to accept. But…this really is Chloe, and I'm…I'm not the person you know. And we need your help."

Lois scoffed, unable to keep the bitterness and anger out of her voice as she said, "The Great and Powerful Kal-El, going to a lowly human for help? Don't make me laugh. I've fallen for that before, remember? And a whole hell of a lot of good it did me. So what is it you want me to do for you? You want me to write another article on your behalf? Make everyone believe that you can be trusted just so you can betray us all again? Sorry, Kal-El, but that won't work this time. You've picked the wrong girl. Even if I wanted to help you – and it'll be a cold day in hell before that ever happens again – there's nothing I can do for you, remember? Or did you not even bother to find out the price I paid for believing in you the last time?"

He looked like he was going to plead with her again, but Lois wasn't having any of it. Whirling on her heel, she strode angrily through the wrought iron gates, figuring he wouldn't bother to come after her. She had only gone a few steps, however, when she heard him call out to her again.

"Lois, wait! I'm not who you think I am! I don't know why you hate me…him…me…but I…"

It was too much. How dare he pretend like he didn't know why she hated him? How dare he stand there and try to play the victim? After everything that had happened…after so many lives had been lost…

"You don't know?" she cried as she whirled back to face him. By her sides, she felt her hands clench into fists and the muscles in her neck corded with rage as she tried to fight to remain calm. "How dare you put on this act, Kal-El! You know exactly what you've done, and you don't care! You've never cared!

"You _used _me, you son of a bitch! You knew I believed in you! You knew how very much I wanted to believe that you were capable of…that you could be the hero this world needed! And you used me because you could! How many people trusted you after those articles I wrote, Kal-El? _How many_? And how many did you kill?" Stalking towards him, she tried to remember to stop before she got too close, but in her anger, she almost closed the distance between them. Stopping before it was too late, she rocked back and forth as the muscles in her legs fought to cover those last few feet, to finish what she'd started.

"I…I've never…" The muscles in his jaw clenched, and she watched as he swallowed heavily before looking at her with wide and, if she didn't know better, shocked eyes. "I've never killed anyone, Lois. I don't under-"

"No, you just let them die because _you _knew best!" she spat. "And now I don't know where the hell you get the nerve to come to me again, begging for help. You think I'll write another article for you, beg the world to give you their trust again? Even if I could, I wouldn't, but I can't do that anymore even if I wanted to, could I? Hell, I couldn't get a letter to the editor published in a newspaper anymore, not after everything that's happened! I lost my job, and you don't even care, do you? You got what you needed from me, so why should the problems of a mere human be any concern of yours?

"I'm not falling for it again, Kal-El! Do you understand me? Get someone else to buy your pack of lies, because I don't want anything to do with you." Sweeping her gaze from his shocked face to his companions, she added in a growl, "And I never want to see you again. I don't know if he told you to impersonate Chloe in an attempt to get me to trust him, but I don't ever want to see your face again. Understand?"

As she stood there, her body trembling from the force of her emotions, panting slightly as she tried to catch her breath, she heard the sound of a car pull up to the side of the road behind her. She wanted to turn to see if the car had come for her, but experience had taught her that it was dangerous to take her eyes off Kal-El, even for a second.

A car door opened and slammed, and then a familiar voice called out to her, "Lois? Is everything okay?"

"I'm fine, Bruce!" she called back, taking a slow step backwards as she kept her eyes locked on Kal-El's wide blue eyes. For a second, she felt a twinge of doubt. He was selling it all just a little too well; for a man who knew no compassion and never showed an ounce of fear, he was certainly selling both emotions at present. She never would have figured him to be so good of an actor. "I'm coming!"

But the man who had come to take her back to Gotham had apparently caught sight of her companions, because when she took the next step backwards, she bumped against the solid wall of his chest. She hadn't even heard him approach, a habit he had perfected that caused her no end of aggravation. Reaching up to place his hands protectively on her shoulders, he said in a voice that could freeze concrete, "Kal-El. I never expected to see you again."

"You know him? K-Kal-El?" Kal-El asked, sounding bewildered. Bewildered and scared, and just a little bit…she had no idea what that emotion was that she heard in his voice. It had never been there before.

"We've met," Bruce bit off sharply, and Lois could hear her outrage mirrored in his tone. Bruce, like her, was incensed that Kal-El was trying to pretend ignorance.

Lois took another step back, towards the car, towards freedom. Her heart was still racing, her breath coming quickly. She hated that she wanted to give into her fear and flee, but to remain in this place for one more minute might be more than she could bear. "Let's go, Bruce," she said as she scooted past him, and she grabbed his sleeve and gave it a sharp tug, trying to get his attention.

"Lois, wait! I just…you have to let me explain! I'm not the same man; I'm from another wo-aah!" Kal-El had tried once again to reach out to her, to get her to listen to him, but this time he went too far. Or, rather, he came too close. Crying out in pain, Lois saw as his knees buckled and he fell to the ground as sweat beaded on his face. Curling up from the agony, he looked up at her, and once again she could swear that it almost looked like a different man was revealed behind his eyes. "W-why…?" he managed to gasp, and she knew what he was asking, even if he couldn't form the words.

Why was there Kryptonite in the necklace she wore? How could he even ask? For a second, she wavered, almost wanting to believe that this was a different man than she had come to know. She lifted a foot, ready to rush towards him, to try to help him to his feet. But then she reminded herself that she knew better. It was an act. It had to be. That's all it had ever been between them – her, wanting so desperately to have faith in the man who had fallen to Earth from the stars. Wanting to believe in heroes, in destiny. Wanting to believe that perhaps the time Kal-El spent among humans would give him a touch of humanity. And him, never promising anything in return, and yet betraying her all the same.

Though a part of her thought that he was getting no less than he deserved, Lois took a couple of steps away until his breathing became more even. "Let's go, Bruce," she said again as she watched with cold eyes as Kal-El slowly rose to his feet. Surely he understood now. She had made her point; there was no reason to remain.

Without waiting to see if Bruce was following her, she turned and walked to the car, where Alfred was waiting with the door opened. He offered her a sympathetic smile as she climbed into the back seat. As he closed the door behind her, however, she heard Kal-El ask again in a weak voice that trembled slightly with each word, "Why?"

She didn't know for sure anymore what he was asking. Why was she wearing Kryptonite? Why didn't she trust him? Why was he no longer able to fool her as easily as he once had?

She didn't have the strength to give him the answers, but she didn't have to. Bruce, her oldest and dearest friend, the one man who had always been there for her, shouldered this burden for her as he had so many other times since her fall from grace. "She never takes it off, Kal-El. But, then again, after the last time the two of you met, when you almost killed her…How could you even pretend to be surprised?"


	6. Reason

**Reason**

Clark was still feeling out of breath when the limo pulled away, Lois inside. Leaning heavily against a headstone, he hung his head and stared at the ground between his feet, uncertain if the heaviness in his heart was a lingering effect of Kryptonite or if it was because of the encounter he had just had. It had been so long since he'd felt the effects of the green meteor rocks that were all that was left of his home planet, he'd almost forgotten how agonizing it was to be around them. Like every drop of his blood was boiling from within.

He didn't move when he heard Chloe shift closer to him; neither did he react at first when she said encouragingly, "Wow…well, okay, that could have gone better. But, you know, we shouldn't give up hope. We just need to convince her that we are who we say we are…somehow."

"Yeah," Clark said heavily after a moment. "That'll be easy, I'm sure. After all, she seemed so willing to listen."

"I-it is a lot to take in," Chloe said in a tone that was clearly intended to placate him, but her voice was a little shaky as she spoke.

"I know," he responded, finally lifting his head to look at her. "Believe me, I know. You think it was easy for me to believe Lois…the Lois I just sent home; not this Lois…was from another world? You think it was easy for me to believe she wasn't crazy? But I did, didn't I? I listened to her; I didn't…didn't…"

"Didn't have the same type of history with her as this Lois seems to have had with you. Or…uh…with Kal-El at least," Chloe pointed out reasonably.

Clark winced at the words, knowing them to be true. "I know," he said heavily with a sigh before jumping to his feet to begin to pace. "It's just…I don't understand! I thought…I thought I was here to…I thought I was sent here to find my destiny! I thought I was sent here to find her! But I've found her and it's clear that she wants absolutely nothing to do with me, so what the hell am I doing here anyway? Why did I get sent to a world where Lois hates me _this _much that she won't even give me the time of day?"

His companion clearly didn't have the answers – or at least, if she did, she wasn't eager to divulge them. He suspected the latter when she opened her mouth to speak, checked herself, paused, and then finally said uncertainly, "M-maybe your purpose here isn't what you think it is. Maybe it's…maybe it's something else entirely. Do you know for a fact that you were sent here to find her so you'd fall in love with her?"

"I-" Clark began before breaking off with a frown. His brow furrowed as he tried to remember exactly what he'd wished as the light had spilled over him. But after all the pain and shock of the early events of the day, he could no longer bring the words immediately to mind. "I think…that is, I thought I'd wished to…to…to undo the mistakes I'd made in life." As he finished his statement, he returned to the headstone upon which he'd been leaning earlier and flung his body against it once more. The force of his action caused it to topple over, and, his arms windmilling as he fought to keep his balance, Clark followed suit a moment later. With a scowl, he rose to his feet, brushed himself off, and replaced the headstone to its previous position. "Great. Just great," he muttered to himself as he did so.

"Well…maybe that's what you're actually doing here, then," Chloe said reasonably as she pointedly refrained from commenting on his embarrassment. "I mean, it seems like you…like Kal-El…did some pretty terrible things in this world. At least to Lois. Maybe you were sent here to set things right."

"And don't I get to be happy at the end?" Clark demanded, straightening once more. "So I was sent here to make up for another man's – another me's – mistakes, and then what? I just get sent home? To be alone?" It wasn't fair for him to lay this all off on her, he knew, and her suggestion had merit. After all, though Lois had been sent to him once before, she clearly hadn't actually been sent to be his destiny. If that had been the purpose, why hadn't Destiny sent him a Lois who was looking for the man she loved, not one who had quite blissfully found him already?

It was incredibly unfair, but Clark didn't really care at the moment. He was disappointed. He had thought, from almost the very moment that he'd realized that he was in another world, that he'd been sent her to find a love like he knew the Lois he had just sent home had with the Clark of her world. Now it seemed that wasn't the purpose in his being here after all.

And to make it worse, it wasn't like he was sent here to befriend Lois and right a minor wrong in her life. She clearly had no intention of letting him do so, even if he did accept that this was the reason for him to be brought here. She not only hated him, she wished he was dead – if the fact that she apparently wore Kryptonite every minute of the day was any indication. And while it was possible she had every reason to do so, Clark didn't exactly relish the prospect of braving the agony that was exposure to Kryptonite in order to right another man's wrongs – even if that other man was himself in another world.

It just wasn't fair, and maybe it was unrealistic for him to have expected it to be. But he'd thought he was going to find what he knew the Clark from another world had. He'd thought he would find the kind of love that would last forever. But this Lois was nothing like the one he'd met in his own world; the short amount of time he'd spent in her presence had pretty well proven that. The Lois he had just sent home had been warm. Loving. True, she'd been as vicious as a wildcat when provoked and she'd attacked him when she thought he was standing between her and the man she loved. But he had no doubt that everything she did was out of love for him. Well, sort of him. He had no doubt that she would do anything for the Clark that was awaiting her return.

Was it so wrong to want some of that for himself? To want a woman who would love him, who would fight for him, as passionately as she had clearly loved and fought for the man she had been engaged to? It seemed unlikely – if not downright impossible – that he would ever find that kind of devotion from the woman he had just met. The only thing she seemed to want passionately was his death, and that was a very inauspicious beginning to any future relationship.

Chloe hadn't answered his question, but he couldn't exactly blame her. There probably was no answer that he wanted to hear. "It's just…it's not fair," he admitted. "I wanted to be the man that Lois was talking about, when she sat on my couch and told me stories about her fiancé. I wanted to find love like that. I wanted to know that…that I had a place in this world, and that I wasn't destined to be alone. But coming here…it's just that I'm beginning to wonder if I'm not supposed to be alone anyway. If I lost my chance to find that kind of love when Lois died on a mountaintop, years before I was even supposed to meet her. And I just…It's just that it's not fair, that's all," he finished lamely.

Fair or not, though, it was the situation they were left with, and Chloe didn't seem inclined to lie to him about that fact. "I know, Clark, but I don't know what to tell you." He was thankful she didn't tell him that life wasn't fair, because while he knew that to be true, he didn't particularly want to hear it. "I just know what you've told me, and that's that we were brought to this world for a reason. Maybe it's not the reason that you thought it was or the reason that you wanted, but if we're ever going to get home, we've got to do whatever it is we were brought here to do. And I don't know about you, Clark, but I do want to go home at some point."

He nodded slowly in agreement. After everything that had happened, he desperately wanted to go home – to the world where his father was still alive and where there were people who loved him. And he wasn't going to do that by sticking around the graveyard. "Okay," he agreed finally, though he knew he didn't sound happy about it. "So I guess I've got to make up for whatever it is that Kal-El did in this world. At least that's all we've got to go on right now. I don't know how to even begin going about doing it, particularly since Lois couldn't seem to want to have less to do with me if she tried, but I guess it's at least a place to start. We'll have to begin by trying, at least, to get her to listen to us…which would be a little easier, I suppose, if we had any idea where she and that Bruce guy went off to."

"That Bruce guy…?" Chloe parroted, sounding amazed. "You didn't recognize him?" At his clueless look, she explained, "Clark, that wasn't just any guy. That was _Bruce Wayne_, the Prince of Gotham City! Billionaire playboy, philanthropist…head of Wayne Industries…? People Magazine's hottest man of the year for at least the last decade? Possibly the most eligible bachelor in the _world_? Any of this ring a bell?"

Arching his eyebrows at her, he responded in a mild tone that belied his true feelings, "I don't follow the gossip rags, and even if I did, he's not my type. But, just so I have this clear, I now not only have to track down Lois and make up for whatever Kal-El did to her, I have to try to get her to listen to me when I'll apparently have a billionaire playboy who girls can't seem to get enough of vying for her attention while I do it?"

Wincing, Chloe said uncertainly, "It may not be as hard as it sounds."

"Uh huh," Clark agreed skeptically. "Okay, well…I guess if he's the Prince of Gotham in our world, he's probably got at least about the same status here, if that limo of his was any indication. So I guess we should head to Gotham first to see if she's there with him. A man with his pedigree, I don't suppose it'll be hard to track him down."

With a slightly nervous look, Chloe wrapped her arm around his shoulders and let him hoist her into his arms. "One way ticket to Gotham on the Clark Kent Express, huh? I guess I'm ready when you are." Faster than a blink of an eye, Clark raced by his father's grave to retrieve his disguise and put it on, and then they were gone.

Clark had been correct in his assumption that Bruce would be an easy man to track down. His castle – what was modestly named "Wayne Manor" – was located just outside the city and was impressive enough to almost put the Luthor Mansion to shame. What wasn't as easy was trying to figure out how to gain access to Bruce once they showed up.

"Okay, this isn't helpful," Chloe groused as she grasped the metal bars of the front gate in her hands and peered intently toward the house. "I was thinking maybe there'd be a member of the staff around that we could bribe to gain entry, but I don't see anyone at all. Do you?" When Clark mumbled a negative response, she continued, "Okay, well, I guess we can try jumping the fence." Her voice was distinctly dubious as she suggested this, for good reason. The fence didn't exactly look easy to scale.

With a sigh, Clark moved closer to the house and stared intently at the imposing flight of steps leading up to the mansion's front doors. He thought about using his x-ray vision to see inside the manor, but as hard as he stared at the building in front of him, nothing happened. Clearly, he was going to need practice. So, instead, he took position next to Chloe, gripping the metal bars in his own grasp as he closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he strained his ears. Once upon a time, he'd been able to focus his hearing so that he could identify the sound of a single voice among a sea of people. He should be able to do something similar now, to hear what was going on inside Wayne Manor.

It took a good thirty seconds before his super hearing kicked into gear, and when it did, Clark almost fell to his knees in pain. It was just like it had been the very first time he'd discovered he had enhanced hearing among his myriad powers. He didn't know if his hearing was actually more powerful than it had been before or if he had simply forgotten how overpowering it could be to hear so much all at once, but the sudden onslaught of sound almost sent him to his knees.

Letting out a sharp cry, Clark felt his knees buckle and caught his weight against the wrought iron gate. It was hard to sort through all the deafening noise, and for a second, he was afraid he'd go mad. What if he never managed to turn the ability off again? Taking deep breaths through his nose, he tried to remain calm as his father's advice came to mind.

_"Concentrate,"_ Jonathan Kent had said as he stood in the barn and tried to help his son hone his newest ability. _"Listen to the sound of my voice…"_ They had worked at it for what had seemed like hours to Clark's poor beleaguered sense of hearing but had probably been mere minutes.

Concentrate. He had to concentrate. Though he felt the pressure of Chloe's hand on his shoulder, he kept his eyes squeezed tightly shut and tried to sort through the sounds, to tune out the unimportant ones as he attempted to focus on the object of his search.

He had to find Lois; without her, he'd never be able to get home. Though it was hard, he tuned out the ambient noises – the sounds of the cars driving on the highway a few miles away, the sound of several passersby chattering - and tried to focus on the mansion in front of him.

And then he heard her voice.

_"…not exactly helpless, Bruce. I don't need protecting…"_

"Lois," he murmured, his eyes fluttering open. Though he'd been trying to focus on the manor behind the gate, he'd unintentionally focused on her instead. Feeling elated that he'd managed to get another of his abilities to work (which also made him feel like it was ever so slightly less likely that his abilities would be taken from him without warning, now that he had them back), he whirled towards Chloe. "I found her!" he told her enthusiastically. "But she's not here; she's in the city somewhere."

As he said the words, they brought him up short. She was in the city, not in the mansion he'd been concentrating on, and yet his hearing and focused unerringly upon the sound of her voice. Was it because he'd been thinking about her, or was there a deeper reason? If it had been the Lois he had sent home, he would have thought he'd honed in on her voice because he was drawn to her. He had absolutely no problem imagining that he was drawn to that version of Lois Lane. But this one? The very idea was perplexing…and just a little scary. No, he consoled himself silently, he undoubtedly had focused in on her voice because he'd been thinking about her and because he knew he had to find her. There was no deeper meaning to it that that.

At Clark's words, Chloe looked confused. Looking around as if searching for a sign that indicated where Lois was at the moment, she asked in bewilderment, "H-how do you figure that?"

Clark flushed, wondering what exactly to say. "Um…I…um…I heard her talking. I…I have good hearing. Really good hearing."

Opening her mouth and then shutting it again rapidly, the petite blonde cleared her throat before saying, "This is one of those things I don't really want to know about just yet, isn't it?"

Looking sheepish, he agreed, "Pretty much."

"Okay, so…you think you can track her down?" Chloe asked, clearly relegating the topic to the "not going to deal with it now" section of her mind. When Clark nodded his assent, she wrapped her arm around his neck and let him hoist her into his arms again. "At this rate, I'm gonna forget how to walk pretty soon," she grumbled good-naturedly as he sped off again.

It didn't take long for Clark to hit the center of Gotham, but he did find tracking Lois down more difficult than he'd anticipated. Apparently, he was going to need quite a bit more practice before he'd truly honed his abilities.

Just when he was about to scream in frustration, however, Chloe saved the day. Spotting a phone booth, she gestured eagerly at it as she exclaimed, "With any luck, it'll have a phone book inside." With a teasing grin, she added, "It's how we mere mortals without extraordinary powers track down people." After giving him this good-natured ribbing, she scooted past him and shot into the phone book, to begin flipping through its pages. When she finally found the proper page in the phonebook, her eyes scanned the page and she frowned. "There's not a Lois Lane listed," she said heavily.

Before Chloe could snap the book closed, Clark stuck his finger in the page and suggested, "You know, after the first year that I played for the Sharks, Lana and I had to change our number because our number had been listed and we got so many calls from fans wanting to either congratulate or heckle my performance the night before. When we got our number changed, we didn't want to have it totally unlisted because we wanted people to still be able to track us down if they needed to, so we had our number listed by our initials instead."

Pulling the book closer to him, he tiled his head to read over her shoulder and glanced at the list of names. "What's her middle name?" he asked as he scanned the various numbers listed under "L. Lane."

"Um…Joanne," Chloe supplied, and Clark grinned when he saw that there was only one "L. J. Lane" in the book.

And they were off again. It didn't take long for Clark to find Lois's apartment building; it was a huge towering structure about three blocks from the Gotham Gazette. Unfortunately, Lois lived on one of the uppermost floors and the building had a doorman who was as attentive as a pit bull guarding the front entrance. There was no way Chloe and Clark could just waltz through the front door, and there was also absolutely no way that Lois would buzz either of them up.

As they stood outside the building and looked up at the sheer height of it, Clark sighed, feeling like he'd hit a dead end. He wanted to use his x-ray vision to see into her apartment – or at least manage to determine which specific apartment was hers. Unfortunately, his x-ray vision was on the fritz or something because nothing happened.

He couldn't just sit there and bemoan the unfairness of the situation, though, so instead he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on honing his super hearing. When it finally kicked into gear, the noise almost deafened him and he clapped his hands to his ears to try to drown it out. It was worse this time, even, than it had been when he'd tried this trick while standing in front of the relatively secluded Wayne Manor – undoubtedly because of his proximity to most of the various distractions currently threatening to deafen him. Groaning miserably, he tried to focus through the pain, but it was hard to concentrate when it felt like a million voices were drilling into his brain, ripping it apart.

Lois. He tried to picture Lois. It was hard to picture her as she had been in the cemetery, the way she'd looked at him in such loathing. So, instead, he focused on the woman he had come to know. The smile on her face when she talked about another world's Clark. The ferocity with which she'd threatened him when she thought he was a danger to the man she loved. The way she'd kissed him as she wished him goodbye.

_"…ow what you're talking about, Bruce." _The voice was Lois's, and Clark sighed in relief as he focused intently upon it and let the rest of the sounds of the world fade away.

Bruce was apparently still with her, because Clark heard him reply, _"I know you're still bothered by what happened. You can talk to me about it, you know."_ Clark didn't know how he felt about this different version of Lois – on the one hand, he tried to remember that this was the same woman he almost fell in love with. On the other hand, however, it was hard to forget that she hated him. But, still, his heart broke a little at the misery in her voice.

She sighed. "I know." After a brief pause, she continued, "You've always been a great friend to me. It's just…this is…it's…complicated."

"It's Kal-El," Bruce returned, his voice gentle.

"Yeah."

In another moment, she spoke again, sounding a little aggravated as she did so. _"It's just…I don't understand…what's he doing here? And why now? Why me? He can't possibly think I'll fall for his act again!"_

"We don't know what he wants, Lois. And we won't until we talk to him," Bruce said reasonably.

Maybe a bit too reasonably, because Lois sounded frustrated when she spoke again. "Oh, no! I know what you're doing! What makes you possibly think that there's even a chance I'd subject myself to that conversation?"

There was a soft sound of fabric brushing against fabric. Then Bruce said softly, "Lois I know you. Your curiosity always gets the best of you. This is gong to keep bugging you until you do something about it…even if that's just finding out what Kal-El is doing here. Do you honestly think you can just let this go?"

Lois sounded incredibly annoyed when she heaved a heavy sigh and huffed, "Fine. No, I probably can't. But you know this sucks, right?"

The soft sound of footfalls followed this comment; one person was walking away. Then Bruce said very softly, "More than you know."

Clark didn't know why, but those four little words broke the spell and he opened his eyes as he stopped concentrating on the conversation going on above him. Though it was none of his business (and he wasn't sure if he cared anyway, he reminded himself churlishly), he wondered what kind of relationship Bruce and Lois had. Of course, he'd known they were friends after the scene at the graveyard, but this…

Bruce clearly knew her, definitely more than Clark did. Probably more than Clark knew the Lois he'd sent back to another world. They were obviously close; Clark couldn't imagine that this world's Lois would open up to people easily, not if her attitude towards him was any indication. But it was clear that she had opened up to the man with her in the apartment above. He thought about the sound of fabric rubbing against fabric, and his mind conjured a dozen different images to explain the sound, each one more unsettling than the last.

Were Bruce and Lois friends? Lovers? Something more? Did the two of them have the same kind of relationship he knew another Lois had with the man she loved? Clark didn't know why, but the very thought of it made him grit his teeth and he felt his hands clench into fists as his stomach twisted into knots. But why did he care? He'd already decided that this Lois was nothing like the woman he'd known and that there was no way that he'd been sent to her doorstep for any other reason than to make amends for another man's sins. There was nothing romantic between them – far from it – and when he thought about the scene in the graveyard, Clark really didn't think he honestly wanted there to be. So why the hell did he feel a sudden inexplicable surge of…_something_ when he thought about the two of them together?

It was because he kept thinking of a kinder, gentler, warmer Lois who was deeply in love with another man. At least that's what he told himself, though in return, a voice in his mind asked softly, _So why isn't that Lois the one you pictured in Bruce's arms?_ The Lois currently being held by Bruce in his mind had her hair ruthlessly pulled back from her face, her face flushed with emotion, her eyes flashing fire…softening only for the man in her arms.

There it was again. That inexplicable _something_.

Shaking his head abruptly, Clark ruthlessly pushed the thought of Lois and Bruce together out of his mind. He didn't know why he was dwelling on that imagined scene; it wasn't like he cared if the two of them were together. He knew he wasn't destined to be with this Lois, so why should he care if she was with another man? Hell, he'd not felt this thing churning in the pit of his stomach when he'd been with the other world's Lois, and he'd longed to be with her, had wondered what it would be like to be loved by her. If _she _didn't bring forth this feeling, why should the woman in the apartment above bring it out in him?

It had to be the stress, he told himself firmly. He'd been under quite a bit of it today. And maybe some residual effect of exposure to Kryptonite, though he didn't remember the effects lingering in such a fashion before – and what he was feeling now was entirely unlike what he felt when he was exposed to the radiation from meteor rocks. Still, it was a more palatable idea than anything else that came to mind at present, Clark decided to latch onto that idea for all that it was worth. Anything else was just inconceivable.

"Hello! Earth to Clark! Come in, Clark!" Chloe said in his ear, and Clark turned to her in surprise. He'd almost forgotten she was there, he'd been so lost in his thoughts. When their eyes met, hers narrowed as she said, "You were a million miles away a minute ago, I swear. And you looked…" Her voice trailed off as if she was waiting for him to explain, but when he didn't, she shook her head and grimaced. "None of my business. Check. Anyway, did you have any luck?"

"Not much," he said heavily, thinking back upon the words he'd overheard without focusing too much about the parties involved. While it had been slightly encouraging in the sense that Lois might at least be willing to listen to him (more than she was before, certainly), it hadn't been terribly helpful. He hadn't been able to determine exactly which apartment the voices were coming from. Maybe after a bit more practice, he would be able to do such a thing, but the fact was that he was just too rusty at the moment.

Turning to look at the building again, he tilted his head back and pondered the height of the structure. It was possible, of course, that he'd have more luck if he tried to focus in on them from the roof, as it was closer to Lois's apartment. He wasn't entirely sure it was a good idea, however. Considering how long it had been since he'd attempted a super jump, there was no guarantee that he'd hit his target. He could just imagine either splatting on the side of the building or totally overshooting and leaping over the building entirely. Then there was the thought of the landing. Given that he'd had some pretty spectacular dirt-eating moments when all he had been doing was going for a run, he shuddered to think of the fallout if he tried to land from a super jump and didn't do a very good job of it.

"Okay," Chloe said beside him, her disappointment almost palpable. "Well, it's probably a bad idea to stand out here on the sidewalk as we try to think of a way into the building. It could take a while, and the doorman keeps looking our way. I think he suspects we're casing the place or something. C'mon." Grabbing his sleeve, she gave it a tug as she turned away.

Together, they moved to the curb, sat down, and pretended to be engrossed in watching the cars pass by on the street as they tried to figure out a way to get into Lois's building. Clark could run in, of course, but he was reluctant to do so with Chloe in his arms. He'd have to run at full speed in order to avoid being seen, and he wasn't sure if that was a particularly good idea at this point. He also wasn't sure what kind of effect that level of speed would have on her.

Almost an hour later, they still hadn't come up with anything concrete. Clark was trying to think of a way to distract the guard so that they could sneak into the building when Chloe sat up abruptly and grabbed his arm. "Look!" she hissed, gesturing towards the front entrance.

Gazing in the direction she was indicating, Clark saw what had caught her attention and he felt his spine stiffen in the few seconds that passed before he jumped to his feet. Bruce Wayne was currently leaving the apartment building, heading towards a car parked on the curb. Before he could get away, Clark rushed forward, certain that Chloe was a step or two behind.

"Wait!" he called as he approached Bruce, who turned and looked at him with a steely glare. Though he knew the other man had every right to be suspicious of him, Clark still felt himself react as he stood as tall as he could and met Bruce's eyes with a gaze that was deceptively confident.

"Why am I not surprised?" the billionaire philanthropist drawled, apparently not impressed. "Although I admit, I didn't expect you to show yourself in broad daylight, after everything you did. Aren't you afraid of being identified?"

As he'd been distracted by the _something_ feeling that was still roiling in the pit of his stomach, Clark was thrown by the sudden attack and didn't really know how to proceed. His illusion of confidence faded, and he felt his shoulders sag slightly as he stammered, "Um…I…" and tried to think of how to proceed.

Bruce spoke before Clark could formulate an even lamer response. "So I assume you're here to see Lois? I imagine you're aware that you are the absolute last person she ever wants to see again."

Nervously adjusting the angle of his hat, Clark said a bit churlishly, "Yeah, I got that point. But I don't have a choice. I need to see her." His companion's eyes flickered over his shoulder and fell on the blonde standing just behind him. Since Bruce didn't seem inclined to respond, Clark explained reluctantly, "It's important, I swear. But…I can't…_we_ can't get into the building."

Though Bruce didn't pull his speculative gaze from Chloe's face, when he spoke, he addressed Clark. "And you need my help, I imagine? Why don't you just fly to her balcony? You've done it a million times before."

Behind him, Chloe blurted out, "You can fly?"

Clark cried, "No!" just as Bruce was declaring the exact opposite. Looking between Bruce and Chloe, Clark felt himself blush as he explained awkwardly, "I…I know that I'm supposed to be able to fly, but I don't know how. Kal-El can fly. I can't." He really didn't want to explain that he was afraid of heights. Setting his jaw mutinously, he glared at Bruce when he saw the other man's skeptical look. "I already told you. I'm not Kal-El from this world. I know you don't believe me, but it's the truth."

After a moment, Bruce shrugged. "Since you know I don't believe you, I have to ask. Why should I help you get within six city blocks of Lois? She means a lot to me, you know, and I was at the hospital with her after the last time the two of you had a 'discussion.' In fact, I was the one who had to rush her to the ICU when she was coughing up her own blood. So why should I do a damn thing for you now?"

Bruce's calmly spoken statement hit Clark like a ton of bricks. He had done that? To Lois? Okay, not _him_, him, but still…he couldn't believe that any version of him could have hurt her like that. The thought sobered him and scared the hell out of him at the same time; he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the polished windows of the apartment building before him, and for the first time in years, he wondered _what _as much as _who _he was seeing in his reflection.

"I…I…" he stammered, his shoulders slumping further still, and had to swallow heavily before he could continue. He felt sick to his stomach. It didn't matter that it technically hadn't been him who had done whatever Kal-El had done to Lois; the very thought that he might have been that man, had things been different, terrified and sickened him.

As he tried to quell the nausea rising in the back of his throat, he noticed the speculative look his companion was giving him and tried to put his fear and disgust aside to concentrate on the issue at hand. Though he suspected Bruce was never going to believe that he wasn't Kal-El, Clark still couldn't give up. He had absolutely no other choice; he _had _to get them to listen to him.

After a moment, he finally managed to say with a semblance of confidence in his tone, "B-Because I know Lois. I don't know the woman in the apartment above us, but I know _her_. And I know that she'll want to hear what I have to say. It'll drive her crazy until she does." In all honesty, he didn't really know this as well as he was pretending, but since he'd heard Bruce say pretty much the exact same thing not long before, he was sure that Bruce, at least, would believe it.

When Bruce's expression didn't even flicker, Clark added a little desperately, "Besides, you know as well as I do that I couldn't hurt her, even if I wanted to. She has Kryptonite, and that means she can kill me. Please…just…ten minutes. That's all I ask. If after ten minutes, she doesn't want to have anything to do with Chloe and I, we'll leave. You can certainly force me to do so, and you know it. Just…give me a chance. Please."

Though he still didn't look the least bit swayed by this argument, Bruce finally gave a brusque nod and turned, silently leading the way into the building. Not one to press his luck, Clark didn't speak as he followed, Chloe close behind him.

Well before he'd managed to figure out how he was supposed to convince Lois he was telling the truth in the next ten minutes, Clark found himself just outside Lois's door. He noticed that Bruce didn't knock before he opened the door and escorted them inside, and once again he felt that inexplicable surge of _something_ deep inside. "Lois? Before you freak out, I need to tell you…" Bruce began, but he didn't get a chance to finish his thought.

Before he could do so, Lois walked out of the bedroom, dressed in a faded tank top and shorts. Though it was clear she was getting ready for bed, Clark saw that she still wore a green pendant on a chain around her neck. Kryptonite.

As soon as she caught sight of her new guests, Lois sucked in a sharp breath and raised her hand to finger her necklace in a nervous gesture. As if reassured by its solid presence, she steeled her shoulders and raised her chin bravely. Glaring at both Clark and Chloe, she spat, "I thought I was pretty clear when I said I never wanted to see either of you again."

Stepping forward, Clark felt his stomach sink as he noticed that she swayed backwards as if her initial instinct was to skitter away from him. However, she stayed in place as said earnestly, "Lois, please…I know you don't want to listen to me right now, but…I really do need your help."

"And why should I listen to you?" she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest. When she moved, Clark saw the bottom of her tank top lift slightly to reveal what looked like a the edge of a thin pink scar on her stomach, just above her right hip. Only about two centimeters were revealed; the rest was hidden under the waistband of her pajama shorts.

As if realizing the direction of his gaze, Lois dropped her arms abruptly and placed her hands on her hips instead. "Well?" she demanded sharply.

"You don't have anything to lose," he blurted. Frankly, he didn't know what else to tell her, so he continued desperately, "Look, you hold all the cards here. You have Kryptonite, so you know I can't hurt you. I can't even come close to you. And you're skeptical of everything I say, so you're not going to be too quick to believe me. You won't be easily fooled again, if that's what you're worried about.

"You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. I _know _you're curious to find out what I'm doing here, why I've been telling you I need your help. And I know it's going to bother you until you have answers. Just…give me a chance. Ten minutes. If you don't believe me after that, tell me to go and I'll go. And I'll never bother you again. I just…please. Hear me out."

He watched as Lois pressed her lips together tightly, looking uncertainly between Clark, Chloe, and Bruce. As the latter stepped forward and rested his hand comfortingly on her shoulder, she nodded abruptly. "Okay," she said, still fixing Clark with a glacial stare. "Start talking."


	7. History

**History**

Clark took in the uncompromising lines of Lois's face and stifled the urge to sigh. He was well aware of the challenge in front of him; he just didn't know exactly what to do about it. Bringing the memory of another world's Lois to mind, he remembered how she had convinced him of who she was, but her method was unlikely to work here. For one thing, he wasn't sure that he knew anything quite as compelling about Lois, and even if he could think of anything particularly relevant, her immediate distrust of him made it very unlikely that she would believe any explanation he could give as to how he knew her secrets. Rather than believing he was from another world, she was likely to think that he'd been spying on her (or something equally as nefarious), and that would make everything so much worse.

Looking to Chloe, he saw that she had no immediate suggestions as to how to proceed, so, bracing himself for a long nine and a half minutes, he began. Since he didn't know how much she knew about Kal-El or even how much Kal-El's life was similar to his own, he was going to have to tell her his story more or less from the beginning and hope that something in the telling would convince her of the truth of his tale. _Yeah. Good luck,_ a snide voice whispered in his mind.

"I'm going to tell you my story, and I know it will sound ludicrous and maybe a little insane, and believe me when I say that I know just how hard it's going to be to believe. But since I only have a little over nine minutes left, I need you both to just listen until I'm done." His story was a long one, but he didn't have time to tell it all so he was going to have to give the extremely condensed version and hope it was enough.

"As I imagine you already know, I was born on the planet, Krypton. My parents, Jor-El and Lara, sent me to Earth to save me when they discovered that their planet was about to explode. I came to this planet in a spaceship that landed in a field in Kansas during a meteor shower, and there, I was found by Jonathan and Martha Kent, who raised me as their own.

"I didn't even know I was an alien, to tell you the truth, until just after I started high school. I was standing on a bridge and there was an accident. The details aren't really important, but it was at that time that my parents told me where I'd really come from and how they'd found me. I was…well, I freaked out, if you want to know the truth, but my parents were…they were pretty amazing, actually. A couple of years later, I was contacted by a scientist – I don't know if you know him, Virgil Swann? – who was able to tell me more about the planet I'd come from and…and a message that had been left in the ship that brought me to this planet.

"Jor-El, my biological father, had sent said I had a destiny – one I didn't want any part of – and I spent the next several years running from what I was and trying to deny that there was anything different about me. I wanted…I'd always just wanted what my parents had. I wanted to get married, have a family, and live a normal life."

So his tale began, and Clark let himself get wrapped up in the past as he spoke. He'd spent years denying the past and running from himself, but now that he'd begun to talk, memories he'd thought long forgotten came back to mind. The past week had given him a perspective on the choices he'd made that was both brutal and rather painful, but he didn't try to minimize or hide what he'd done. If he was going to get Lois to listen to him – and if he was going to ever learn to be the man he'd discovered he wanted to be – he couldn't hide any longer.

"I-I know how hard this is to understand, and I don't know that I can really explain, but even back then, people used to tell that, with my powers, I could…there was so much I could do for the world. I think I understood that, but…I was scared." He felt shamed by his admission, but he couldn't afford self-pity or remonstrations right now – not if he was ever going to convince the woman in front of him.

"I was afraid that I would always be alone, that nobody would ever be able to really accept what I am, so I tried to hide from it. I didn't…there was this girl that…I'd loved her for years, and I-I just wanted to be with her. I thought I could, but then she…she found out about me, and she was…" He shook his head, unable to really express in words that look in her eyes when she'd looked at him the first time, after finding his spaceship."She couldn't deal with it, not at first. Eventually she did, but…the way she'd looked at me…"

Grimacing, Clark closed his eyes and forcibly pushed the memory away. When he opened them again, his gaze was steadier, his composure regained. "A couple of years later, my abilities were taken away from me. It's a long story, one that I don't have time for now. But…I had a choice. I could be the man I was born to be, or I could be just me. Clark Kent. I chose to let my powers go, and I never regretted it once, not really." Looking at Lois, he added quietly, "Until I met you. The other you."

His time was almost up, and he couldn't read the expression on her face. "I know it's a lot to take in, and it's hard to believe. But when I met you…her…I realized how much I'd lost by running away from myself, and I couldn't stand to do it any longer. So I…well, I guess you could say I've been given a second chance. I was brought here, to your world. I don't know why; I can only imagine. Chloe was dragged along with me by accident; it's a little hard to explain.

"I can't tell you why I was brought here, exactly. All I can say is that I was brought here, and I can't help but think that there's something I have to do here. I don't know what it is, but…I need to take this chance, Lois. I need…I had a chance to see the man I should have been – the man I would have been if I'd not spent so much time running away. But I need your help. I need you to believe me."

He finished his plea and watched as she dropped her gaze, staring for a moment at the carpet as the last few seconds of the time she'd allotted him ticked away. When she looked back up at him, he knew he'd lost, and he braced himself for the words he already knew were coming.

Though there was something in her gaze he couldn't quite identify but seemed almost like a touch of regret, she said softly, "I can't."

"Lois, for god's sake!" Chloe burst out, charging forward from the position she'd taken behind Clark. He jumped at the sudden and unexpected movement, swiveling his head to look at the irritated woman in surprise. "Would you stop being so damn stubborn for once in your life?" she continued, oblivious to his shock.

Lois's eyebrows arched, but the corners of her mouth quivered a bit. Clark could swear she was about to break out into a smile. While she seemed to be struggling for a response, the man behind her apparently decided to relieve her of the effort. "I doubt it," he muttered in a voice that was just loud enough for everyone to hear while still remaining soft enough for him to pretend he hadn't intended it to be audible. "The woman's as stubborn as a mule, If you ever hear her say the words "You may be right," please tell me how you managed it. I've been trying to get her to say them for years now."

The woman in question didn't seem affronted by this assessment of her character, but she did roll her eyes and mutter back, "I can tell you the trick, Bruce. Try being right for a change, and I'll agree with you. I know how you need your fragile male ego stroked every once and a while."

It surely wasn't jealousy that had Clark wanting to snarl that the friendly banter could wait until later, he was certain. No, it had to be the stress of the situation that made him so irritable. "So that's it?" he said a bit more shortly than he'd intended.

Clark could almost feel the force of Bruce's assessing gaze as the older man turned to looked at him with a thoughtful look, and he tried not to squirm under the weight of it. He didn't care what Bruce thought; it was Lois that he had to win over and nobody in the room seemed to be inclined to pretend differently.

For her part, Lois bit her lip for a second, but then she shook her head. "It's a good story, I'll give you that. But I believed in you once, and I paid the price. I can't do it again, not when…you've given me nothing. Not one reason to believe that what you say is true. It's a good story, but how do I know that's not all it is? Tell me why I should listen to you. Tell me why I should put my faith in you again…even if, as you claim, you're not the same man that I know. Tell me why I should take the chance. Tell me why I should believe that all of this is true and not just a trick to fool me again."

A heavy silence fell in the room, and though it was tense and awkward, nobody rushed to fill it. Clark's eyes were fixed on Lois's, and he knew she was waiting, though for what, he didn't know. What did she expect of him? What could he tell her, what proof could he give? If this was the first test he'd have to overcome to be the man he wanted to be, he was off to an inauspicious start.

He had to bite back a sudden surge of anger, brought on by his awareness of the futility of his efforts. It wasn't fair that she should so test him when his faith her – well, the first Lois he'd met, at least – had been so freely granted from almost the first moment that they'd met. He'd trusted her, he'd offered to help her, but yet the Lois in this world wasn't willing to do the same! It wasn't fair, and how could she demand so much of him, when he had so little to offer her? It was her fault, in a manner of speaking, that he was here anyway!

He hadn't asked to meet Lois Lane, not the first time at least. He hadn't asked for her to arrive on his doorstep and look at him with eyes that he knew expected so much and were presented with so little. He hadn't asked her to change his life, to make him see a world that could have been if only he had been a little less afraid. He hadn't asked for her to make him see the love that could have been his and then cruelly take it away again. He hadn't ask for any of it!

Well…okay, actually, remembering how she'd been brought to his world to begin with, that wasn't exactly true. He _had _actually asked for all of that; he just hadn't realized what he'd been asking for at the time. As his mental spate of belligerence faded, he accepted with chagrin that he was being unfair.

What had Lois done in his world, anyway? Yes, she'd shown him a different world, but would he ever have even seen it if he hadn't already been looking? He was been the reason she'd been dragged to his world to begin with, but there was more to it than that. He knew that he had to admit that he hadn't been truly happy with the life he'd been living. After all, he never would have seen the possibilities she'd brought with her if a part of him hadn't been willing – even eager – to do so.

Lois had changed his life, but she wouldn't have done so if he hadn't wanted her to. And what had he really lost by trusting her, by listening to her? Satisfaction in the life he'd been living? If he'd truly been satisfied, if he'd truly been _happy_, then her words would have had no effect upon him. If the life he'd been living had truly been the life he'd wanted, then he would have wished her well, sent her back home, and returned to the apartment above the Talon to live out the rest of his days with Lana by his side, content with the choices he'd made even after seeing the life that could have been.

In all honesty, though it felt like he'd lost so much after he'd met Lois Lane, the truth was that she'd taken nothing from him that he'd ever really had. She'd just forced him to see that for himself, to stop hiding from it any longer.

But this Lois…she wasn't like him. She didn't ask for him to be brought to her, at least not so far as he could tell. He doubted that she sat in the dark some nights and wondered what her life could have been like if she'd made different choices. She'd never been denied her chance to see what might have been, if only the two of them had been given the chance to meet; she'd met him, the Kal-El of this world. She'd met him, she'd trusted him, and in the end, she'd been betrayed. Clark didn't know how, but it didn't really matter. He looked in her eyes and he knew it was the truth. He saw the way she fingered the pendant on its thin chain and knew that her fear wasn't feigned.

He'd risked nothing by trusting the Lois who had shown up on his doorstep, but he realized now that Lois would be risking everything if she trusted him. He watched as Bruce placed a comforting hand on Lois's shoulder, and he recognized that she accepted this familiarity without question. The gesture was so casual, Clark wondered if either party even realized that it had happened, but Clark did. More, he recognized what it meant.

Lois had a life of her own, here in this world. It was a life totally different from the one another Lois had spoken of, but it was a life that she had made for herself. Perhaps it had been arrogant for him to have begun to think that she could only be happy if she'd met him, simply because another woman had told him that another man had brought her such joy. Perhaps he'd been selfish in making that wish in the loft of his parents' barn, thinking only of his own happiness, his own longing.

She hadn't wished him here; she hadn't asked for him to come. She hadn't asked for him to change her life, and after the experience she'd had with the Kal-El of this world, could he really blame her for not wanting to trust him now? Could he really judge her for choosing not to take that chance? When he'd chosen to trust Lois, he'd done so without recognizing he had anything to lose, and he'd continued trusting her because he'd considered it a fair trade, what she was taking from him and what she was giving him in return. The woman in this world, so far as he could tell, had no such assurance.

She'd trusted him once – a different version of him, to be certain, but him all the same – and he believed her when she said she'd almost lost her life for her trouble. Could he really ask her to take that risk again on mere faith that what he had to offer her in return might be worth it – particularly since he didn't even know what that thing he might offer her could be?

Chloe, he was pleased to note, wasn't about to give up so easily. Glowering at the two of them, she'd begun a passionate defense on Clark's behalf as Clark struggled with his latest epiphany, but her words weren't having any noticeable effect on either Lois or Bruce.

Finally, when Chloe had come to a pause in her monologue, Lois turned and looked at Clark with flat eyes. In a voice devoid of expression, she said, "Your ten minutes are up. I trust you'll remember the promise you made and that this is the last time I ever have to see you again. The Kal-El I know doesn't think he owes anyone anything, of course, but you do. You owe me that, at least."

With a quick jerk of his head, Clark acknowledged her words as he stood to leave. He'd taken his chance, his best shot at convincing her to believe him. There wasn't anything else he could think of to do, no further plea he could make to change her mind. He'd told her the truth, but he couldn't get past the wariness between them, and now he didn't know what he was going to do. He did know, however, that he'd keep his promise to her. He, at least, would never bother her again.

Wrapping a gentle hand around Chloe's arm, he waited until she'd turned to look at him before giving his head a small shake. With that gesture, he hoped to convey the entirety of what he was feeling – both the sorrow that he couldn't change the situation and his determination to follow through on the promise he'd made. When he saw her swallow and nod slightly in response before pulling away to walk dejectedly towards the door, he knew she'd understood.

Clark had never felt more impotent – more weak and crippled – than he did in that moment, as he stood in Lois's living room and prepared to let her go one final time. She was gazing at him steadily, nobody speaking a word as if they were all waiting to see what would happen next.

Finally, he found his voice. "Thank you both for listening to me, at least. I know my story's pretty hard to believe; I knew it before I began, but I had to try." He wanted to turn, to walk away, but his feet wouldn't move. "I…Lois, I'll keep my promise, I swear. After I leave, you won't ever see me again. Whether or not you'll see Kal-El…" He shrugged. How was he to know whether his other self was dead or alive? "I hope that you don't. I hope that what you said in the graveyard was true, and that he's…that he'll never bother you again.

"Lois, I know…I know how little it means, coming from me, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what Kal-El put you through and for the man that he was. I wish there was a way that I ccould make up for everything he's done. If I could take away all the pain he's caused you, I would. If you can believe nothing else I say today, please believe that. I just…I want you to be happy, Lois." She wasn't the Lois he'd come to know and even to care for, but he still wanted her to be happy. "I know you have no reason to believe me, but…I just…I'll never get another chance to tell you any of that, but I…I just…" He stammered, words failing him just when he needed them most. Flushing in embarrassment over his insufficiency when it came to telling her what he needed to say, he finally finished lamely, "I'll go now."

Without waiting to be shown out, Clark turned and walked to Chloe. She was looking at him in resignation and a touch of despair, and he knew her concerns without her needing to speak them aloud. Lois had needed his help to get back to her world before; how was he ever to get the both of them home without her help in this world? It seemed impossible, but they would find a way to do it. They didn't have any other choice.

Still, this small measure of resolve wasn't quite enough to stand up under the crushing weight of desolation that fell over them both as they walked in silence through Lois's door and trudged towards the elevator. The questions of where they would go and what they would do next were insupportable, the problems they faced insurmountable.

"We'll figure something out," Clark finally murmured with a thin note of hope in his voice that rang false even to his own ears, but Chloe was far too kind to point out this fact.

When the bell dinged to signal the arrival of the elevator, the sound was almost a jarring intrusion to the silence in the hallway, and as the doors slid open with a silent whirr, Chloe reached out to place a trembling hand on his arm as he stepped forward. "Maybe we…" she began, but she never got the chance to finish her sentence.

"Wait!" The call, unexpected as it was, caused them both to startle and turn quickly, jostling each other in the narrow confines of the elevator doorway. Unbelievably, Lois was standing in the hallway behind them, the corridor's lamplight softening the lines of her face but insufficient to completely obscure the tightness of her features. When neither Clark nor Chloe spoke immediately, Lois took a tentative step forward, though she stopped before she'd drawn close enough for Clark to feel the effects of the Kryptonite she still wore around her neck.

Her eyes shot from Chloe's face to Clark's, but it didn't take long before her gaze travelled back to her cousin's features again. Then, steeling herself as if about to head into battle, she explained softly, "H-He never would have apologized. Kal-El, I mean. He was…" She grimaced and looked away before repeating, as if it explained everything, "He never would have apologized."

Clark had been too shocked by her presence to react immediately beyond reaching out to stop the elevator door from closing, but at these words, he moved to step forward. He paused, however, when it became apparent that Chloe was either unwilling or unable to follow just yet. He turned his head to look at his companion, but her attention was fixed solely on the woman before her.

"So you believe us?" she asked quietly, a wealth of meaning in her tone, and once again he was struck by the fact that he wasn't the only one for whom this entire situation was unbelievably difficult. Chloe had lost the cousin she'd loved as a sister, in her world. Then, she'd been given reason to think for a brief time that she might have gotten her back again, only to be informed that the girl she'd grown up with was truly gone and would never return home, though she had to have continued to hope beyond reason that she would. Before she'd had much time to process this last blow, Clark had sent Lois home, taking her from her cousin once again.

He glanced from Chloe to Lois, to see a mirroring image of despair in either cousin's face. Neither woman seemed to note his presence and Lois winced. In a voice that was a tortured rasp, she spoke in little above a whisper, "I-I don't know."

Whatever Chloe had been hoping for, this clearly wasn't it. However, she finally stepped forward and joined Clark, and he could swear he saw quite a bit of Lois in the way she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin to a stubborn angle. "Okay," she said with a note of steel in her voice. It was clear that Chloe was about to take a page from her cousin's book and wage an assault to make Lois believe that the story they were telling was true, and Clark reflected that things were about to get very interesting. Possibly hazardous to his health, but interesting.

There was a new gleam of speculation and possibly a measure of respect in Lois's eye as she jerked her head to the side, gesturing towards her front door. "You'd better come back inside; we probably shouldn't conduct this conversation in front of the neighbors. But…um…I'll be back in a minute. I'd better change."

Clark and Chloe followed Lois back inside and watched as she paused to speak to Bruce in an undertone. Though it would have been incredibly easy for Clark to discover what she was saying (provided he could get his hearing ability to work for him this time), it was not without a small measure of effort that he refrained from doing so. He didn't know why he felt so jealous of the relationship Lois and Bruce shared, but he recognized it was something he was going to have to deal with sooner rather than later. By issuing the invitation to return to the apartment, Lois had laid down a truce of sorts, tacitly acknowledging that she was willing to believe, at least for the moment, that what they said was true. If Clark indulged in a fit of petty (not to mention entirely irrational) jealousy, he could shatter the fragile peace.

His resolve was sorely tested when Bruce pulled Lois into a hug. He was further irritated to notice that she went unresistingly, letting the moment drag out longer than (at least in Clark's mind) was strictly necessary. When Bruce then whispered something in her ear and made her laugh, Clark had to clench his teeth in irritation, though his annoyance there paled in comparison to how he felt when she turned her head and brushed a kiss across Bruce's cheek. When Clark saw that, his eyes grew hot in a way he recognized, if it felt a bit unfamiliar after all this time. Before he could accidentally set fire to Lois's couch, he bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut, taking a few deep breaths to quell his fit of annoyance.

Even as he reminded himself of the fragility of the truce that had been declared, Clark grudgingly admitted to himself that there were just no two ways about it. He sincerely disliked Bruce Wayne. He didn't know why he felt such a passionate aversion to the man – particularly since he knew Bruce had been instrumental in persuading Lois to give Clark a chance to explain. None of that mattered, though. He disliked the handsome billionaire – who was just a little _too _handsome and a little _too _rich and a little _too _close to Lois for Clark's peace of mind. It wasn't jealousy, he told himself firmly, that caused this intense dislike. It was just…well, there was just no good reason, but Bruce clearly brought it out in him.

By the time Clark was reasonably certain that he wasn't about to accidentally set fire to the room, he was happy to see that the warm moment between Bruce and Lois had ended. As Lois disappeared into the back room, Bruce turned to look at the people before him, his expression inscrutable. Walking forward, Chloe looked at him, and when she spoke, there was a measure of both nervousness and hope in her voice. Clearly, she was uncertain of what to make of him quite yet, and it was quite possible that she was a little intimidated by his reputation. Bruce was apparently quite the ladies' man, Clark noted sourly.

However she might have felt about him personally, it was also apparent that, in Bruce, Chloe was seeking an ally and was hoping he wouldn't let her down. "We have a lot to talk about tonight, still. Will you be sta…uh…," she flushed in embarrassment as she tried to find a way to finish her sentence that would be both telling and polite. "j-joining us?" she finally finished.

Walking to meet her, Bruce took her hand in his and said softly, "I have to admit that I don't know what to make of all this any more than anyone else, but…ah…Ms. Sullivan," he said the name a little tentatively, as if he still wasn't entirely certain it truly was hers. "I apologize, but there are some business matters that demand my attention, I'm afraid, so I won't be able to stay tonight. Besides, the three of you need a chance to speak, and I'm certain you'll feel more comfortable doing so if I'm not around. Still, I've promised Lois that I'll come by tomorrow, but until then, just…be patient with her. This is…it's hard on her."

Chloe was clearly a little disappointed that she and Clark were losing their potential ally in the battle ahead – when it came to struggling with Lois's obstinacy, even Clark suspected after such a short acquaintance that three against one weren't particularly favorable odds in their favor. However, taking what she obviously considered to be unfortunate news (though Clark wasn't entirely certain that he agreed) with good grace, she nodded. "I-it was nice meeting you," she said a bit awkwardly, but that was probably understandable. This was an unusual social situation, one which the normal dictates of good manners seemed insufficient if not incompetent to address.

After wishing her a polite goodbye, Bruce turned and walked slowly towards the door. It was obvious that he wasn't entirely thrilled with the prospect of leaving, but whether due to his own offer, Lois's request, or circumstances beyond his control, it was also obvious that he intended to. However, as he walked past Clark, he paused to issue a final warning in a voice pitched so low that only its recipient would hear. "I'm inclined to believe that you're telling the truth; you don't seem like the Kal-El I know. However, you should know that I'm not going to take any chances, not again, not when it comes to Lois's life. I'm going to call her later, and she'd better pick up the phone, Clark. If she doesn't…if you dare try to hurt her again…if she gets as much as a papercut from your encounter together…" He paused and there was a chilling warning in his eyes as they locked on Clark's. "The last time we met, I didn't kill Kal-El because Lois asked me not to. I won't be stopped again."

Clark believed him. His personal distaste for the man aside, he had to appreciate how much Bruce obviously cared for Lois – though there was still a question of whether this care was romantic in nature or strictly platonic. While the ambiguity in Lois's relationship with Bruce annoyed him for some reason, Clark couldn't deny, after hearing what little he had about Kal-El's previous encounter with Lois, that Bruce had good reason for concern. He was glad, in all honesty, that Lois had someone who cared about her so much. He just wished the concern wasn't coming from a person whose his very existence he didn't find so thoroughly annoying.

Meeting Bruce's eyes, Clark nodded solemnly. It was only after receiving this acknowledgement of the gauntlet that had been thrown down between them that Bruce nodded in return and left without another word. Then, as silence fell in the room once more, Clark met Chloe's eyes and offered her a shaky smile. "At least she's willing to listen to us, right?" he asked a little weakly.

"It's a start," she agreed with a sound that would need some serious life support before it could be classified as a chuckle. Once again, a tense and uncomfortable silence fell between them. Their circumstances forced an unnatural closeness between them, but it was at moments like this that Clark remembered that he'd met her only a week before and hadn't had much time to really get to know her in the interim. Obviously feeling the same struggle to find something to say, Chloe cleared her throat and glanced back at the doorway through which Lois had disappeared. "She probably won't be much longer," she said after a moment.

"Probably not," he agreed rather inanely as he walked forward to get a better glance at some frames hung upon the nearest wall. With a sigh that sounded distinctly relieved, Chloe joined him, and in silence, they examined the various items in front of them with an intensity that the objects didn't entirely deserve.

The expected photos were found on the wall – pictures of Lois at various events, including a couple of award ceremonies. In some, she was alone. However, there were a few in which her father and sister stood on either side of her, and in at least a couple, Bruce was by her side. Seeing this, Clark quickly moved his attention on to other things. There was a large expanse of wall that was empty, though there were nails sticking out of the wall. Though it was likely there once used to hang frames here, as well, these pictures (or whatever the frames had contained) had been removed, and Clark found himself wondering why.

His interest in the wall satisfied, Clark moved over to the desk standing nearby. With a glance, he took in the papers scattered around the top, but he made a conscious effort not to read the notes scribbled in the margins in Lois's handwriting. Whatever she was working on was her business, and he was reluctant to invade her privacy. However, in the corner, he saw a single worn photo frame and, in curiosity, he picked it up.

Though there was no reason for it to do so, the picture it held surprised him – less, he supposed, because of the picture itself as much as for the fact that Lois no doubt spent quite a few hours at her desk and he was somewhat surprised to find that this was the picture she chose to have so readily to hand as she did.

A young Chloe and a young Lois stood together, their arms slung casually around each other's waists as they stared with devilish amusement into the camera. Clark would guess the two of them to be in their teens, though of course, as he hadn't known either girl at that point in their lives, he couldn't be any more exact. But he didn't need to have known them to see that the two girls in this photo were very close; there was something about the mirrored expressions of 'Yeah, we rock; what are you gonna do about it?' on their faces that made that fact very clear.

He heard Chloe step up beside him, and he tilted the frame to the side to show it to her. When he heard a sudden intake of breath and saw her reach for it with trembling hands, he gave it over willingly. "Do you recognize it?" he asked softly, wondering at the wisdom of the question. He knew that there were some things that had been similar between his and Chloe's world and the one from which Lois had originally come, and he supposed that the same was possible of this new world in which they found themselves. Still, he was aware of how painful this situation had to be for Chloe, and he didn't want to make it worse.

"N-no," she said softly, her voice sounding a little choked though, with her head bowed, he couldn't see her face to see if her eyes had welled with tears. "D-dad gave me the necklace she's wearing on my s-sixteen birthday." She didn't have to finish the thought. It seemed likely that this world's Chloe had received a similar necklace, which meant that this picture had been taken long after the day on which Lois had died, back in the world from which they'd come.

He didn't want her to dwell on the years that she'd missed out on, so he rushed to find a way to keep her from doing so, but her next words took him completely by surprise. "I suppose this picture was taken shortly before the Chloe of this world died."

Clark choked. He wondered what had made her say such a thing, but before he could regain sufficient control of his power of speech to ask, Lois spoke from the bedroom doorway. She'd finished changing and had entered the room just in time to hear her cousin's statement. "Was murdered," Lois corrected bluntly.

Chloe paled, and Clark moved to grab the photo frame out of her hands before she could drop it but she wouldn't relinquish it so he gave up the effort. "Wh-what?" she asked.

Lois winced, as if she realized how bluntly she'd broken the news. "Chloe. My Chloe. Sh-she was…she was murdered, actually," she said in a softer tone, and Clark moved a short distance away to avoid the effects of the necklace she still wore as she stepped forward and took the photo from Chloe. Glancing down at the picture, she said softly, "I'm sorry…I'm didn't mean to be so…It's hard for me to accept, the idea that you're really her. Of a sort."

"No, it's okay. I understand," Chloe answered, and in all honesty, she probably did. "H-how did I…I mean, how did she…What happened to her?"

As they spoke, Clark pieced everything together. He hadn't really processed the words Lois had spoken at the gravesite earlier, but he did now as he brought them to mind. How could he have missed her saying her cousin's name? And, more importantly, how had Chloe known that she was dead in this world? She hadn't been with him when he'd overheard Lois's conversation with a ghost.

He saw a muscle jump in Lois's cheek, but she didn't avoid the question. Instead, she looked at her cousin, and there was such sadness in her face that it took his breath away. How had he forgotten the power this woman had over him – a power that apparently wasn't held exclusively by the Lois he'd originally met? How had he forgotten how much her pain tore him up inside?

Momentarily forgetting now the necklace she wore around her neck, Clark took a few steps forward. She wasn't the same Lois he had met, and, admittedly, while he understood why the woman before him felt as she did about him, he rather missed the old version of Lois that he'd come to know. Still, he hurt to see her in such pain, and so he acted instinctually in wanting to be close to her, to provide her comfort. He stopped short, however, when the familiar burning started within, and he was forced to stop before the pain could cripple him. Pressing his lips together, he had to force back the wave of emotions that fell over him in that moment. He remembered how much another Lois had loved the Clark who was waiting for her, and it saddened him to realize that this love was one that this world's Lois and Clark had never found. It also angered him that Kal-El would have acted as he had – not only in hurting her, but in being the type of man who would do such a thing. He wished he could understand how Kal-El could have come so far from the man he'd likely once been, but at the same time, Clark wasn't sure he wanted to know. Finding the answers might, in the end, be far more painful than merely asking the questions in righteous indignation.

The two women before him appeared to be oblivious to Clark's internal struggle, because their conversation continued without so much as a pause. Glancing down at the photo she was still holding gently – even lovingly – in her hands, Lois said quietly, "There was an explosion. Chloe…my Chloe…she'd…she'd offered to testify at a trial. Lionel Luthor, the undisputed King of Metropolis, had…she found evidence that he'd murdered his parents when he was younger and it was in part due to her efforts that he was put on trial. She knew her life was going to be in danger, but…but she did it anyway." Her shoulders shuddered as she heaved a deep breath, and then she continued, "She knew her life would be in danger, of course, but she believed the FBI when they told her they'd keep her safe. I told her…"

Lois didn't finish her sentence, either because she couldn't or because she chose not to. Instead, after giving her head a quick shake, she explained, "The safe house they took her to blew up the moment they took her inside." Her voice was a harsh rasp as she concluded, "That bastard, Lionel Luthor, killed my baby cousin. She meant the world to me, and he took her from me and didn't even care. Would you believe that he didn't even leave me her body? I guess he had some of his cronies clean up, after the fire burned away, but when I asked him once about it, he laughed. He _laughed _and told me I'd never find it." It was clear, from the bitterness in her voice, that he'd told the truth. She never had.

"What happened to him?" Clark murmured.

Not looking up, she answered, "He died in prison. I only wish I could have sent him there for what he did to Chloe, but there just wasn't get enough evidence to pin the bastard to the wall for that."

In a voice that was still somewhat shaky, Chloe asked, "How did he die?"

Lois's shoulders gave a very visible jerk as she looked back up at Chloe with an expression of pain, as if she'd forgotten for a moment that the woman she was talking to was the girl she'd been talking about. However, a second later, her eyes narrowed and she let out a caustic bark of laughter before answering, "A rare liver disease killed him, actually. He used his billions to prolong his life as long as he could, but there wasn't anything the doctors could do in the end and he died."

There was a wry twist to her lips, and then she admitted, "I'm glad he's dead. I can only hope he died screaming." Turning her head away, she slammed the photo frame back in place, and Clark jumped at the loud crack of wood against wood. He was surprised to see that the glass hadn't cracked from the impact.

"Anyway, that's old news," she said, her voice having regained its previous equanimity as if her moment of vulnerability and rage had never existed. "And I really doubt rehashing the past is going to help get the two of you home, which I suppose is what you both are after. So…why don't you both have a seat? I'll put on a pot of coffee, and then maybe we can figure out how to get you guys home."


	8. Partners

**Partners**

The rest of that evening was spent in conversation that was unproductive at best and downright frustrating at worst. Unlike the first time Chloe and Clark had found themselves in a similar situation, they actually knew how they had been transported from one world to another. They also knew how to get home, it was just an utter impossibility as the crystal had shattered.

Lois had been unwilling to concede defeat in this respect – she seemed to think Clark was being obstinate on the issue just to spite her – and so the three of them had sat up until the wee small hours of the morning arguing the point. They had only finally agreed to shelve the matter until the next day when Chloe finally cracked and declared that she was going to go to bed. She further warned them both that they had a choice: either they agree to sleep on the issue and return to the discussion the next day, or she was going to give them a head injury of some sort in order to make them sleep regardless of their consent. Feeling somewhat disgruntled, they had finally agreed. Lois had set her cousin up in the guest room, and Clark had taken the couch.

When Clark awoke the next morning, it was to the rather unfamiliar smell of burnt eggs. Laying there on the couch as he tried to get his bearings, he heard the unexpected sound of laughter. Curious about what had caused such mirth, he stood slowly and took a few limping steps towards the kitchen before he remembered that he no longer needed to favor his bad leg. Clearly, though his body was no longer scarred, it would be a while until his mind recovered from his previous injury.

As he approached the kitchen door, he heard Lois say doubtfully, "…not that bad, is it?"

"Hmm…" Chloe responded thoughtfully. "Well, it's not _good_," she admitted.

Lois seemed to agree. "You know what I think? I think this calls for more cheese." Clark watched as she grabbed several slices of cheese from the block next to her and tossed them into the pan.

"More cheese?" Chloe asked laughingly. "You know, your eggs are almost a liquid as it is."

"A _cheesy _liquid," Lois corrected her. "The cheese makes all the difference!"

With a rather undignified snort, Chloe corrected her in return, "A cheesy _burnt _liquid, which only confirms the suspicions I had about you growing up. You really could burn water, couldn't you?"

Sounding somewhat affronted, Lois mumbled churlishly, "You know, that's not as hard as people make it sound." That seemed to be too much for Chloe, because she doubled over and howled in laughter. Sounding like she was trying to hold back her own chuckle, Lois added dryly, "Now stop criticizing and get the fire extinguisher ready. I'm going to make toast."

By the time the laughter following this remark had died down, Chloe was sitting on the ground, tears flowing down her cheeks, and Lois's face was flushed with her own amusement. Chuckling at the scene in front of him, Clark finally spoke up. "So, how's breakfast coming along?"

Lois apparently had been unaware of his approach, because at the sound of his voice, she shrieked, whirled around, and flung the spatula she'd been holding in her hand at him. Moving quickly, Clark sidestepped the projectile, but just after it whizzed past his ear, he heard it make contact with a squelchy thud. Confused, he turned to see what had been hit.

Bruce Wayne was standing directly behind Clark, his gaze fixed on the yellow liquid staining the very center of what had previously undoubtedly been a pristine white shirt. Nobody in the apartment said a word as they stared at the stain for a long moment, and then Bruce raised his head and looked at the woman standing in front of the stove. His eyebrows arched in amusement, he drawled, "You know, Lois, I think your cooking has definitely improved." At her sound of horrified laughter, he explained, "A year ago, your scrambled eggs weren't even this solid."

"B-Bruce!" she finally spluttered though her face broke out into a smile that made Clark think fairly sour thoughts. "You're here early!" She took a few steps towards him but stopped when she saw that Clark was standing nearby and had begun to wince from the effects of Kryptonite. Fingering her necklace, she threw him an apologetic look and stepped back again, and Bruce scooted past Clark to walk to Lois instead.

"It's one in the afternoon," he told her dryly, eliciting a surprised look from her.

"Er…is it really? We were up late talking so I guess we slept in," Lois explained as she brushed a kiss across his cheek.

Next to her, Chloe snorted. "That's one thing to call it, I suppose. Personally, I think it was more along the lines of arguing," she muttered darkly.

Her comment seemed to amuse the man standing next to Lois, because he chuckled. "So I take it you're more level-headed than these two?"

With a cheeky grin, she replied, "Not always. But it's really hard to be _less _level-headed than Lois, so I invariably look good in comparison." While her cousin made a sound of affronted protest, Chloe winked and leaned towards Bruce conspiratorially. "It really worked in my favor when we were growing up. I was no angel, don't get me wrong, but when compared with the trouble Lois used to get herself into…well, let's just say I managed to weasel out of more than a few groundings by reminding my dad that it could have been worse. I could have been with Lois."

Clark felt like the odd man out as he watched the scene in front of him. Bruce and Chloe were laughing at the latter's joke, and even as Lois cried out in reproach and tossed her oven mitt at her cousin, she was giggling. Only Clark was the only person who was not involved in the scene – indeed, he was the only person who _couldn't _join the group as the Kryptonite Lois wore ensured that he had to maintain a very careful distance from her at all times. He knew that there was more than physical distance between himself and the people in front of him, however. The ghost of Kal-El was almost a tangible presence, an unscalable wall between himself, Lois, and Bruce.

Clark was lost in his own dark musings, bitterly resigning himself to the thought that clearly nobody planned to acknowledge his presence in a way that didn't involve flung spatulas, when Lois said, "Sorry about the shirt, Bruce. And…ah…Kal-lark…er, Clark…um…I shouldn't have thrown the spatula at you. You just surprised me, that's all." It wasn't _quite _an apology but it appeared to be the best she could do at present. While she was trying to see him as different from Kal-El, she obviously hadn't managed to clearly distinguish them in her own mind just yet.

Though his bitter thoughts had made him feel anything but civil and he was privately wondering how many mornings he'd be faced with the prospect of dodging projectiles, Clark mustered the graciousness to say, "No problem," though he couldn't entirely keep the churlish note out of her voice.

He immediately felt like an ass as his reply caused the good humor in the kitchen to instantly evaporate. Lois shot a quick glance at his face and toyed with her pendant as she shifted her weight from one foot to another. Then, sounding a little unsure, she asked a little too brightly, "S-so, should we have breakfast?"

"Sure, I'll have some eggs," Bruce offered confidently.

"You'd think you'd know better by now," Chloe said, the brightness in her own voice ringing a little false.

Bruce alone sounded unfazed by the sour note Clark had unintentionally injected into the afternoon's humor. "Oh, believe me. I do," he told Chloe dryly. "But if I refuse, I'll be hearing from Alfred later. You'd be surprised how devious that man can be when he's miffed with me; I'll be dealing with overly starched shirts for weeks."

The petite blonde beside him snorted. "Maybe you should introduce him to some of Lois's cooking. If this is a representative sample, I'm sure he'd come to understand why he should be wary of making you eat it."

With a grin, he responded, "Oh, he's eaten some of her cooking. That's why he expects me to do likewise. To tell you the truth, I'm not entirely sure if it's his passive-aggressive way of making me pay for the stomachache he'd suffered from that evening or if it's simply his way of reminding me what a good cook he is in case I'm ever tempted to fire him. Either way, I don't dare refuse."

"You know," Lois said conversationally through gritted teeth, "I can only pretend to be deaf for so long, and if you think Alfred can be devious about making you pay for being a jerk, just _imagine _what I can do to you."

That wiped the smile off his face. "Er…I'll have an extra helping, if you can manage it," he said hastily.

"Damn right you will," Lois grumbled, though the corners of her lips were twitching once more. "How 'bout you, Chloe?"

Chloe blanched. "I-I'm not very hungry, actually. I'll just have toast. I can take care of it!" she added hastily as Lois turned towards the toaster.

"I'll take some," Clark spoke up from his position in the doorway, surprising everyone in the room. Lois recovered quickly, and Clark watched his hostess grab a plate and spoon a meager amount of eggs onto it. As he compared the plate she'd prepared for him with the Bruce was eyeing in dismay that had been prepared for him, he added, "Actually, I'm…I'm pretty hungry this morning. Could I have some more?"

"Y-you're sure?" Lois asked in shock. "Maybe you should try some first before you commit to anything. Chloe and Bruce aren't really kidding about my cooking, and I don't really want to make anyone sick."

Clark grinned, happy to have her undivided attention for once. "It's okay. I've had your cooking before; I know what I'm in for," he lied. "You haven't managed to kill me yet."

Though part of him was worried that he might have just bitten off more than he could chew (for all he knew, her cooking really could be more than even his stomach could handle), when the cold look she always seemed to have in her eyes when she gazed at him thawed a little and her face dissolved into a smile, he decided it just might be worth it. When Bruce then noticed her smile and glowered in Clark's direction, any doubt the latter might have had dissolved. He didn't care if it killed him; that his offer had so moved Lois and so annoyed Bruce made the risk of a little food poisoning absolutely worthwhile.

"O-okay," she agreed warmly, turning back to the stove to spoon the rest of the eggs onto his plate. "Wow…I can't believe I'm actually going to say this, but I think I have to make some more! Why don't you guys get started, and I'll join you in just a few minutes?"

Chloe grabbed Clark's plate off the counter while Lois started cracking eggs again, and then the three of them – Bruce, Chloe, and Clark – walked to the small table nearby and prepared to eat. As they seated themselves, Bruce and Clark locked eyes and, staring confrontationally at each other, scooped some eggs onto their spoon and took a defiant bite.

It was all Clark could do to swallow that first bite without gagging. However, when he saw the cocky grin being thrown at him by the man across the table, he found the strength to choke the cheesy ooze down and scooped up another spoonful.

Spoonful after spoonful, the two men matched each other bite for bite as they wolfed down the food. When they were done, Bruce drawled, "I think I'm still hungry. You?"

"Yeah," Clark said nonchalantly, as if his stomach wasn't already giving protest over the food it had just consumed. "It was pretty good, actually. I could go for more."

With his eyes still locked on Clark's, Bruce called out, "Hey, Lo…?" Clark wanted to punch him. "You don't happen to have any more eggs, would you? Clark and I are still pretty hungry."

Because of her necklace, Clark knew she was coming before she even poked her head through the door. He hadn't expected her to look so adorable, though, as she asked with a grin that could light up Monroe Square Gardens, "Really? You guys really liked it? I knew the cheese would make all the difference! I-I'll be right back!"

Chloe didn't seem to be as amused as she watched the scene play out before her. As soon as Lois's head ducked through the doorway again and Clark heard her socked feet slide across the linoleum as she darted towards the stove, Chloe took advantage of the moment of privacy. Jumping to her feet, she muttered darkly, "You guys are both jerks, and I hope those eggs make you sick. It's the least you deserve."

Clark was completely baffled by his companion's inexplicable ire, and by the look on Bruce's face, he could tell he wasn't alone. When neither man was able to provide an adequate response (or was even able to contemplate what type of response that would be), Chloe gave a huff of frustration and stormed back to the kitchen, almost careening with Lois as she came bolting back into the room with a pan full of eggs in her hand.

"Here!" she said breathlessly as she scooped her offering onto the two plates. "Oh, I'm sorry!" she babbled when she saw Clark jerk back fast enough to almost topple off the seat; she'd gotten too close with the Kryptonite. Moving fast, she flung the eggs onto the plate and then scampered backwards to a safe distance, watching the men at the table with a hopeful look on her face. "Y-you guys did want more, didn't you?" she asked a little nervously.

"Oh, yeah," Clark responded.

"Definitely," Bruce added, and the two resumed their silent contest.

Clark had to admit that the first batch had been a marked improvement over the second. Though he hadn't thought her scrambled eggs could get any worse, an addition of what tasted like three tablespoons of salt soon proved him wrong. As revolting as the eggs were, however, he figured he could take it. He wasn't about to claim defeat before Bruce did, not if he had anything to say about it.

Only about halfway through the second plate, however, Clark discovered that he didn't have anything to say about it as his body began to burn. Letting out a cry of agony, he looked up through the haze of pain to see Lois standing next to him, fury written in every line of her face as she grabbed the plate of eggs from out in front of him. Thankfully, the agony abated a bit as she walked around the table and snatched Bruce's plate away as well.

"Lois –?" Bruce began as Clark tried to regain his breath.

"W-what –?" he finally managed to choke out when she'd gotten far enough away for the pain to fade.

Looking at Lois's face, Clark could see that she was livid. He just didn't understand why. Glaring at the both of them, she snarled, "Don't even pretend like you don't know! I can't believe you two! You know, the next time the two of you decide to measure the size of your respective…_testosterone_, you can leave me the hell out of it! You boys feel the need to fight over toys or mark your territory, that's fine! But I'm not about to be impressed that a jerk won some stupid context, and I'm not some prize either of you stand to win, you get that? Don't you ever pull something like that again!"

"B-but we weren't…!" Bruce said quickly as he jumped to his feet. While it looked like he wanted to pull Lois in his arms, the look she gave him froze him in his tracks. Clark couldn't blame the other man for not moving forward; the look in Lois's eyes could have frozen concrete.

"Oh, you know exactly what you were doing!" Though her anger was still palpable, as she spoke, Clark could tell that she was as hurt as she was livid. "I thought you wanted more eggs because you guys actually liked them, that I'd cooked something good for a change, and you two were hungry for more. But that's not what you were doing, is it? You wanted more eggs because you thought they were disgusting and you wanted to know who would flinch first…or maybe get sick first." Looking from one man to the other, she challenged, "I'm right, aren't I?"

"I-it wasn't like that!" Bruce protested, but Lois wasn't listening. With one final glare, she whirled and stormed back into the kitchen, muttering darkly all the while as the two men were left exchanging mystified glances with each other in her wake.

Chloe, deciding to take pity on the two men, shook her head in exasperation. "Come on, you two. I think we should probably leave Lois alone for a little while. Why don't we figure out what we're going to do today while she calms down a bit." The loud clanging of pans in the kitchen accentuated Chloe's statement and made the younger girl wince. "Er…we may have a while."

Clark wasn't about to argue; he had a feeling it would be a good idea to stay as far away from the irate woman with the frying pans as possible. Had he thought about it, he'd have realized that Lois could do him no actual physical harm, so long as he kept his distance from her. However, that logic was drowned out by the voice of reason that was screaming rather loudly that powers or no powers, he did not want to risk crossing Lois Lane. No, for the moment, it was definitely best to keep a safe distance. He heard a loud clanging from the kitchen. A _very _safe distance.

"Does anyone want to fill me in on what you've discussed so far?" Bruce asked as he took a seat next to Chloe on the couch, leaving Clark to take the chair nearby. He didn't mind the arrangement; while Chloe and Bruce chatted, he wanted to take the time to mull things over.

When Lois had come to his world, everyone had been faced with the problem of discovering how she'd come and how to get her home. This time, Clark already knew the physical mechanism that had brought him and Chloe into another world. Unfortunately, the crystal had shattered, so it would be of no use to him now. But did the Kal-El of this world have a crystal of his own that they could use? Would it be enough, he wondered, to simply find the crystal if it did exist and wish that it send him home, or was there something more here that he was supposed to do? Would Jor-El be able to give him any answers, or was he on his own? And why, when he made the wish he had, had he been brought here to this world, of all places?

There were dozens of questions that didn't seem to have any answers, at least none that would come easily. The only person Clark could think of who might have answers for him would be found in the Arctic if at all, but even if the portal in the Kawatche Caves still worked in this reality, he had no idea where he'd even begin to look for the key.

As he sat lost in his thoughts, Lois finally finished taking her anger out on the dishes and walked back into the living room, taking a seat in a chair on Chloe's left, as far away from Clark as possible. "So," she said conversationally, as if she hadn't been contemplating throttling two-thirds of the group in front of her ten minutes before. "What are we talking about?"

Bruce leaned forward and turned his body towards Lois. "Actually, Chloe was just telling me that they figured out how Lois…that is, the other Lois…was transported to their world because her arrival was accompanied by an E.M.P.. Maybe we should see if a similar pulse accompanied Clark and Chloe when they arrived here."

"I don't know," Clark said slowly. "I mean, tracing the E.M.P. helped us figure out how Lois had gotten to our world, but it wasn't really helpful beyond that. I'm not sure what else the E.M.P., if there was one, could tell us that we don't already know. I mean, we know that a Kryptonian crystal brought us here, but the crystal broke when we arrived."

"Do you think there's a similar one here?" Chloe asked.

He frowned thoughtfully. "I've been thinking about that, but I couldn't say for sure. I just don't know what Kal-El has done and what he hasn't done in this world. If there's a Fortress of Solitude here, it's possible that there's a similar crystal inside. I just don't know if Kal-El ever brought the stones together. Even if he did, it's possible that the Fortress could have been destroyed since. I just don't have any way of knowing."

At this, Lois spoke up. "Okay, question. What exactly is this Fortress of Solitude you keep mentioning? It sounds like something a ten year old would name a tree house."

As the corner of his mouth lifted in amusement, Clark admitted, "I never really thought about it that way, but I guess you're right. Actually, it's…er…a little hard to explain. It's what's left of Krypton. Well, to be more accurate, it's sort of like a mini-Krypton here on Earth. See, there were these three stones, scattered around the Earth, that Jor-El – my Kryptonian father – wanted me to find. When they were brought together, they formed a crystal, and the Fortress grew out of that. Back on my world, when I was Kal-El for a while…again, long story…I gathered all the stones and built the Fortress before giving up my powers. Here…" He paused and shrugged. "It's probable that Kal-El did this same, but I can't guarantee it."

"Okay," Lois replied wryly. "Well, I think we should all pretend like what you just said didn't sound completely insane and go from there. Can we just go to where the Fortress should be and see if it's there? That might be the easiest way."

"N-not really," Clark replied sheepishly. "It's in the Arctic. Kal-El may be able to fly there, but I can't, and while there should be a portal in Smallville, where I grew up, it requires a key. I don't have the key, and I don't know where it is."

"Right…helpful," she replied on a heavy sigh.

Bruce interjected, "Is there anyone who might know if the Fortress exists and, if so, where we could find the key to get there?"

Ducking his head, Clark considered the question. Finally, he said almost reluctantly, "There are two people who might know enough about Kal-El to be able to help us. The first is my mom, but…I don't know where she is. I tried to find her in Smallville, but they said she'd moved and nobody seemed to know where she'd gone."

"And the other?" Bruce prompted, but Clark didn't quite have the nerve to reply. He wasn't sure how much he wanted to risk ripping open an old wound.

Luckily – or perhaps unluckily, depending on one's point of view – Chloe was there to answer for him. "You think…Lana?" she asked softly, looking at him in concern.

"It's possible," he admitted heavily. "I just don't know. I think it's possible that Kal-El told Lana his secrets, but I'm not sure I really want to…Lana was really hurt when she found out about me. My Lana, I mean. She was scared, and she…if she reacted the same way here, I'm not sure I want to risk opening up old wounds for her again."

"But, still…if it's the only way to get home…" Chloe reminded him gently.

"I just don't want to hurt her more than I already have," he returned. "Well…any more than I assume Kal-El already has."

At this, Lois spoke up again. "Okay, so we don't go to Lola right away."

"Lana," Clark corrected her quickly.

With a wave of her hand, she said nonchalantly, "Whatever. Why don't we see if we can find your mom first; we'll worry about Lena after that."

Clark was about to correct her again, but before he could, Chloe asked, "So what should we do first? Try to find Mrs. Kent, or investigate the E.M.P.? I still think it might be helpful to see if there was a similar pulse here on this world as there was on ours. After all, the pulse came out of the caves, not from the north. There may be another portal here in this world that's not in the caves. It is possible, right?"

"I suppose so," Clark admitted. "But…I do…I do really want to find my mom," he admitted. He had a promise to live up to, after all, and even if he hadn't, he needed to see that his mom was okay in this world.

"So we split up," Bruce offered. "Two of us investigate the E.M.P., if there was one. The other two try to track down Mrs. Kent. Lois, why don't you and I go to my office to work on the E.M.P.?"

Lois looked less than enthusiastic about this prospect. "Somehow, I think you're forgetting how spectacularly bad I am at science stuff. It makes no sense for me to sit there staring at computer readouts that would put me to sleep even if I understood them, which I probably wouldn't. It makes much more sense for me to try to track down Mrs. Kent. Chloe and I could do that, and you and Clark can deal with that scientific mumbo-jumbo."

"Wait a minute," Clark interjected. "If anyone's going to find my mom, don't you think it makes sense that it should be me?"

Arching an eyebrow at him, Lois replied, "Maybe not. Remember, in this world, Kal-El isn't exactly the same person you are. I'm thinking there are probably a number of bridges he's burned, and I wouldn't be surprised if his relationship with his mom was one of them. All things considered, she may need a little warning before you just show up at her door."

Though Clark couldn't entirely argue the point, he still wasn't willing to give in. "I understand, but she's still my mom. I-I need to be the one to find her. Even if she tells me she never wants to see me again, I need to see that she's okay." A part of him couldn't imagine that his mom would ever want such a thing as to never see him again, but having met Lois, he was trying to come to terms with the fact that she could want just that. He was going to have to prepare himself, just in case.

"Okay, so Clark and Lois go find Mrs. Kent, and Bruce and I can work together on the E.M.P.," Chloe suggested with a curiously bright voice. A heavy silence met her remark, in which everyone traded uncomfortable glances. After a moment, she explained reasonably, "It makes sense."

Though Bruce didn't argue the truth of her statement, he still seemed reluctant to agree with what she'd said. "Still…I'm not comfortable with the idea of Lois and…" Clark didn't know if it was good manners or some other source of prudence that stopped him from finishing the sentence, but it wasn't like everyone in the group couldn't fill in the gaps. He still didn't trust Clark enough to trust him alone with Lois – which was fine, because Clark wasn't entirely certain he was up to spending so much time alone with Lois just yet.

Lois, on the other hand, didn't seem inclined to let good manners stop her from speaking her mind. "Yeaaaah," she said drawing out the word. "I'm not really sure that's a good idea. I can't get close to him, remember? I am wearing Kryptonite, after all."

"You don't trust us enough to take it off?" Chloe asked, sounding slightly wounded.

Clark saw Lois's lips tighten and her hand raise to finger her pendant, and he blurted, "No, it's okay. She should keep it on."

Everyone looked at him in surprise. "Are you crazy?" Chloe finally demanded in an undertone that was clearly meant to be directed for his ears only but was hissed loud enough that their companions could only have failed to hear her if they had been both deaf and in a different apartment.

"She shouldn't take it off unless she feels ready to do so," he explained. Then looking to Lois, he met her astonished gaze and said softly, "It's her protection; it keeps her safe. I would never do anything to take that away from her."

He kept his gaze locked on hers until she tore her eyes away, and then he glanced around at the group. Chloe was looking vaguely dissatisfied; Bruce was wearing an inscrutable expression. "I don't want to force Lois to take it off either, but what do we do instead?" Chloe asked unhappily. "Lois and I work on the E.M.P. while you and Bruce track down your mom?"

"This is getting ridiculous!" Lois finally exclaimed irritably. "Bruce has to investigate the pulse; not only is he somehow not bored to tears by science stuff, he's the only one of us who has the ability to get what we need to look into it. At least, he can get it faster than any of the rest of us can. Trust me on this. Clark wants to find his mom, and I should be the one to help him. I'm really going to be more superfluous than helpful if I try to help Bruce with the technological side of things – the last time I was let loose at Bruce's office, it was a disaster. Things got broken; I don't like to talk about it. So it only makes sense for Chloe to work with Bruce, and Clark and I will track down Mrs. Kent."

"Lois, you can't…!" Bruce began to protest, but she cut him off.

"It'll be fine, Bruce," she said reassuringly, her tone softening.

Not placated by her assurances, he growled, "I don't trust him."

Her expression didn't so much as flicker as she murmured softly, "Then trust me." Though Clark could tell Bruce wasn't entirely satisfied, his mouth snapped shut and he refrained from arguing any further. Apparently satisfied by her small victory, Lois turned her attention back to Clark. "We'll figure something out," she said for the benefit of the group, though the way she was staring at him made him wonder if she wasn't looking for a similar reassurance from him.

Whether everyone believed her or whether nobody was eager to argue the point any longer, nobody spoke into the silence that fell following this remark. Finally, Chloe asked uncertainly, "So…sh-should we get started?"

"Definitely," Lois said firmly as she jumped to her feet. "Bruce, can I talk to you for a second?"

As Lois and Bruce moved away from the group to speak quietly amongst themselves, Chloe turned to Clark, a small frown creasing a line between her brows. "Are you sure this is a good idea? That Kryptonite…and you don't know what you'll find if you do track down your mom. Just from what little we know about Kal-El…are you sure you know what you're getting yourself into?"

"No," he admitted. "I don't know what he's done, but I know he let them down. My father is dead in this world; my mom moved away from Smallville after she lost everything. He let them down, and I have to make that up to her in whatever way I can. If I don't try, who will?"

Chloe didn't appear satisfied, but their moment of privacy had ended. Lois and Bruce exchanged a quick hug, and then Bruce turned back to the blonde by Clark's side. Though his face was grave, he offered his arm in a gallant gesture and asked, "Shall we go?"

A slight blush stained Chloe's cheeks as she laid a tentative hand on his arm and smiled up into his face and walked with him to the door. "If you're not worried about being shown up by a girl," she teased, and the front door shut behind them, cutting off his reply.

Walking into his line of vision, Lois shook her head with mock exasperation and rolled her eyes. "I swear, that man should come with some sort of Surgeon General's warning. If anyone ever figured out how to bottle that charm, no woman in the world would be safe."

Tilting his head slightly, Clark regarded her curiously. "Are you? Unsafe, that is."

Snickering, she arched her eyebrows at him. "Am I under his thrall, do you mean? Please! I'm a special case, and he's good but he's not _that _good. Besides, Bruce and I are just friends. He isn't particularly interested in trying to sweep me off my feet, so I'm pretty sure I'm safe." Clark wasn't as entirely certain of Bruce's intentions as his companion appeared to be, but Lois didn't seem to notice. "Anyway, we have other things to worry about just now. So, how are we going to work together without killing each other?"

Clark grimaced. Edging forward, he got as close as he could to her, stopping when the pain intensified from a dull but tolerable ache to a mind-numbingly searing burn. "Okay," he gasped, staggering backwards until the pain faded once more. Gauging the distance between them, he estimated it to be roughly around six or seven feet. "I think this is about as close as we can get to each other. At least…no offense…it's as close as I feel comfortable getting to you."

Lois's mouth twitched in appreciation of his humor. "Not a fan of my perfume, huh?" she teased. Then, frowning slightly, she too considered the distance between them. "It is a bit much if we're to work together, isn't it?"

Because he was enjoying the novelty of lighthearted banter between the two of them, he replied jokingly, "No, not at all. I can run into town to pick up some handheld radios, and we can communicate that way. I don't see the problem there; do you?"

She threw him a tight smile in appreciation of his attempt, but even as she did so, she shook her head and began to finger her necklace once more. "I just…I can't take this off yet. I know rationally that you and Kal-El are not the same man, but still…I'm just not ready."

Her words sobered him instantly. "I know, Lois, and believe me when I say that the last thing I want is for you to feel the least bit scared by being around me. At the same time…well, I know you don't trust me, but if we're going to work together, we'll need to find a way around this."

She gave a grudging nod in acknowledgement of his words, and he decided that would suffice for the moment. Switching gears suddenly, he said, "Well, I suppose we can work around it for now while we try to find my mom. Any suggestions about where we should start?"

With a firm nod, she gestured towards her computer. "I think the most logical thing to do would be to start an Internet search. Chances are likely we'll find a hit somewhere. Why don't you get started on that, and I'll call some people I know, see if there's any information they can give me? Even if we can just get a list of addresses, it'll at least be a place to start. Any idea what city she lives in?"

"Not really," he admitted ruefully. "I just know that she moved away from Smallville after my dad died."

"It's not much to go on," Lois admitted, "But I've worked with less. Why don't you start the Internet search, and I'll make a few phone calls?"

Nodding, Clark walked to the computer to do as she suggested. As he lowered himself into the chair and waited for her computer to boot up, however, he took a moment to ponder the woman who was currently rifling through a Rolodex on the counter.

She didn't trust him, and she didn't like the Kal-El that she'd known, but she was still willing to help him anyway. There were probably a thousand things she'd rather be doing then helping him track down a woman she'd never met, and there were probably a million reasons why she felt like she should leave him to his own devices. But she was helping him anyway. Maybe this Lois wasn't like the Lois he'd known before, but she wasn't _entirely _dissimilar, either.

With a slight frown, Clark pulled his mind off thoughts that would get him nowhere and turned his attention back to the computer screen. He didn't have time to ponder the different sides of the woman who was, at least for the moment, acting as his partner. He had to find his mom.


	9. Family

**Family**

"Any luck?" Lois asked from the bedroom doorway, her phone calls apparently finished.

At the sound of her voice, he turned sighed. "There are over three thousand matches for Martha Kent according to Google. So far, none of them look like they could have anything to do with my mom. How about you?"

With a wry grin, she offered him a halfhearted shrug. "Oh, you know…pretty much the same. There are no likely looking Martha Kents in the greater Gotham area, unless your mom is pushing seventy." At Clark's negative response, she continued, "I don't really know anyone in Smallville, Kansas, but I called some people I know who do. They didn't have anything on a Martha Kent either. So no leads there, but at least we know that, wherever your mom went, it wasn't Gotham."

"Great," he said with forced lightness, pretending a nonchalance he didn't feel. "So two down, about a billion cities to go!"

He appreciated that she didn't try to pretend like they were further along in their search for his mom than they were. "We're not completely without options, here, Kent. I'm still waiting on a couple of people to call me back. Why don't we go ahead and look at that list of sites while we wait?"

She walked forward to look at the computer screen over his shoulder and stopped when her proximity caused him to cringe and suck in a sharp breath. "Ah…sorry," she muttered lamely, backing off.

"N-no, that's okay," he responded, brushing a hand across his forehead to wipe his sudden perspiration away. Then, to cover for the awkward moment that had fallen between them, he asked, "So…uh…did you call Bruce to see how he and Chloe are doing?"

Lois scoffed. "Clearly, you don't know Bruce. He's working on a problem right now, so anything short of an atom bomb…or Alfred…is not going to get his attention until he's solved the puzzle to his satisfaction. We'd better just leave him alone for right now; he'll get in contact with us if he finds anything – or at least Chloe will, I expect. And if Chloe's anything like Bruce, Alfred will have to make sure the two of them don't pass out from hunger in the meantime."

Having passed on her assessment of the situation, Lois perched on the arm of the sofa at a safe distance from Clark and arched her neck, trying to peer at the computer screen over his shoulder. The distance was such that Clark doubted she could really see anything, and she asked, "Any luck?"

"Not yet," he conceded, turning back to the computer to continue scrolling through the pages. In silence that was more uncomfortable than anything else, he continued to scroll through page after page, looking for anything that might lead to information on his mother. He was on page thirty-seven when Lois's cell phone rang, bringing him out of what had almost become a trance.

When he heard her answer, he cast a glance at her over his shoulder, wondering if this was one of the calls she'd earlier declared herself to be waiting on. Her face, which melted into a mask devoid of any emotion as soon as the other person on the line began to speak, gave nothing away, which only served to heighten his curiosity. He'd seen Lois in a variety of emotions in the short time he'd known her. He'd never seen her so face look so utterly blank.

"Yes, of course," she was saying into the phone. "I understand…Yes…It is important, I promise you. I wouldn't have asked if…No, I'm sorry, I can't tell you what…No! It has nothing to do with…yes. Yes, of course. I'll be there in an hour…No, I won't be late, I promise…But I…Damn it, I said I wouldn't be late, didn't I?" These snapped words were the first sign of emotion she'd betrayed throughout the entire conversation, but she had herself under control again almost as quickly as she'd lost it. "No, of course I know you don't have to do this, and I appreciate the fact that you're taking the trouble…Yes, yes, of course. I'll see you then."

Snapping her phone shut, she turned that expressionless mask of a face towards Clark. He hadn't realized that he'd turned completely around in his chair and was gaping openly at her until that moment, but she didn't seem perturbed to note it. "Well, Clark, I know someone who may have some good news for you, after all. I have to run out for a few minutes to meet someone, but when I come back…"

"I want to go with you," he interjected suddenly, leaning eagerly towards her. If there was even a chance that the person she was meeting really had some information on his mom, he wanted to be there to hear it.

"Not a chance," she said abruptly. "It's too dangerous."

"I don't care," he said stubbornly. "I'll wear a disguise if you want, but if this person really does have information that could lead to my mom, I want to be there. I need to be there."

She scowled at him. "You know, don't you, that stubbornness isn't exactly an attractive trait?"

His mouth quirking into what was dangerously close to a smile, he replied, "You should know."

"Yeah. Yeah, I should," she conceded, though she didn't sound pleased about it. "Okay, fine," she finally agreed, jumping to her feet. "You can go with me, but only if you agree to do exactly as I say."

"But I-!" he began to protest, but she cut him off.

"No. It's that or no deal, Clark, and we can just sit here in the apartment for the next hour and my source can keep the information she's found and never take my call again. And she won't, I can assure you. We either do this my way, or we don't do this at all." Because her tone was utterly implacable, Clark nodded. Whatever rules she'd ask him to abide by, she probably had her reasons.

"Okay," she said shortly. "My source is going to meet me at a café downtown. We've got to hurry, because we should get there early, if you're coming along. Now, listen, because this is very important. At no time while we're there can you act like you and I came together, or even like we know each other. We have to come in separately, and we leave separately. Understand?"

Nodding, he said slowly, "Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I just don't understand why you don't want us to –"

She didn't need him to finish his thought, as she interjected, "Because I don't want to draw attention to you at all. Not by anyone in the café, certainly, but definitely not by her. That's the most important thing I need you to remember. She cannot notice you. Got that? You need to stay as inconspicuous as you possibly can."

"But I want to know what's going on," he protested. "I mean, this is about my mom, ultimately. I want to know what she has to say!"

Grimacing, she admitted, "I know. So this is what we're going to do. I'm going to go into the café and sit at a table. My source will come in shortly after me, if we have it timed right, and she'll sit across from me. Now, trust me, this is critical. Wait until after she comes in and sits down before you come into the café. You can take a seat close to us, if you want to know what she's saying, but you need to stay completely out of her line of sight, understand? Because I'm telling you, Clark, if she sees you, it's all over. So you don't ever let her see you. I don't care what happens or what you hear. I don't care if the café catches on fire; you don't let her catch sight of you, okay? If anything happens – if you even think she's caught sight of you – I want you gone so fast there's not even a blur of you left behind. You come back here and wait for me. Got all that?"

He nodded, but he was still frowning in confusion. "Okay, I'll do what I say. But why do I have to be so careful? I mean, who is this person?"

"That's not important," Lois said brusquely. "The only thing you need to know is what I just told you. And, trust me, I don't expect this meeting to be entirely pleasant. You just sit back and keep your mouth shut, and everything will be fine." As if realizing that he wasn't entirely satisfied, she sighed heavily. "Clark, I know this is hard for you to understand, and I wish I could explain it all to you, but I-I can't. Just trust me when I say that a lot of people out there hate Kal-El for everything he's done. A _lot_. But most people won't recognize you, because people see what they expect to see most of the time. There are only a handful of people who either knew Kal-El well enough or hate him passionately enough to recognize him on sight, under any circumstances, regardless of disguise. I'm one. She's another."

Though he wasn't sure that he wanted the answer, he asked quietly, "And which one is she? Does she know Kal-El well enough or hate him passionately enough to recognize him?" The tightening of her lips and the glance she shot him out of the corner of her eye were answer enough. What would have perhaps been a better – if more dangerous – question would be into which group Lois herself would fall.

The two of them didn't speak on the way to the café, giving Clark plenty of time to mull over Lois's instructions and work on being inconspicuous. It was actually a good deal easier than he'd suspected. His baseball cap and glasses obscured most of his facial features, hiding the blue eyes that many had told him were his best feature from sight. What was perhaps more interesting was the re-emergence of his old limp. It wasn't something he consciously affected; he didn't even notice it at first, in fact, so familiar was that catch in his stride. It was strange, but his body, when not concentrating on being "super" and the confidence that came with it, had reverted to the old habit.

He had never thought he would ever be grateful for the accident that had nearly crippled him, but what had once been a tolerated bane of his existence now contributed to his disguise. Superman (he could not bear to think of the man another Lois had so loved as Kal-El, certainly not while he was here in this world) walked with fluid confidence; Clark knew this was so from the video tape he'd seen. Clark Kent, or, rather, the man he had once been and was now pretending to still be, was half lame. Given that, how could anyone suspect the two men were one and the same?

Following Lois's instructions to the letter, Clark waited outside the café she led him to until he saw a woman dressed in stark black wearing large, dark sunglasses approach her table and sit down. Only then did Clark follow suit, choosing a seat in the booth directly behind the newcomer. From this vantage, he could see the expression on Lois's face but her companion could not see him. Neither could he catch a good glance of her face.

He did hear every word she said, however, and that was enlightening enough. "Wanna tell me what this is all about?" she asked irritably, and Clark took the moment to assess what he could of her. His first thought was oddly that she reminded him of Lois as he'd first seen her in the graveyard – dressed in black with her hair pulled severely back from her face. The tone of her voice – including the mistrust and anger – also reminded him of his first meeting with this world's Lois.

"I can't tell you that," Lois said flatly. "All I can say is that it's important."

Her companion scoffed. "Sure it is! Let me guess…for a story? Oh, but I forgot. You're not a reporter anymore!" Lois didn't reply, she just stared steadily into her companion's face. Unperturbed by the lack of response, the angry woman switched topics but continued the attack. "You know, I have to say you had some damn nerve, publishing that last story of yours! You think I wouldn't realize that was you?"

Clark wondered what she was talking about, but Lois didn't seem confused. "I did what had to be done," she said quietly.

"All you did was drag up old ghosts!" came the irate retort, hissed through clenched teeth.

Clark could tell by the twitch in the muscle of Lois's jaw that she was struggling to maintain her temper, though her voice was still flat and emotionless when she replied, "She needed to be put to rest. I would have thought you'd understand that."

He wished he could see the expression on the stranger's face as she leaned forward angrily. "And who lays _your_ ghosts to rest, Lois? Or have you forgotten about them?"

Lois ducked her head and began to trace designs into the woodwork of the table. "I haven't forgotten them, but…what do you want from me? It was a mistake! I made a mistake! But what was I supposed to do? Just sit back and wait until…"

"You could have come to me!" For the first time, the stranger's tone raised, her exclamation carrying easily over the tables around them. Glancing around at the faces that had turned curiously in her direction, she lowered her voice once more. "You should have come to me! I could have looked into what was going on; I mean, I was married to…"

"Yeah, you were married to him!" Lois blurted, her voice accusing. "You were married to him and you didn't have a _clue_! Do you think it didn't occur to me to ask you what was going on? But you made it pretty damn clear that you weren't interested in looking closer at what you deemed 'his business.' Were you afraid of what you'd see?"

"He didn't leave those people to die," the woman in black snarled.

Lois shook her head. "No, you're right. He didn't. But he was just as responsible, and you know that."

In response, her source flipped the manila envelope she'd brought across the table. "Here, take it," she said angrily. "But just so you know, this makes us even. I don't ever want to hear from you again!"

As the woman in black shot to her feet and whirled toward the door, Lois stood quickly and called after her, "Lucy, wait! I don't want…"

She didn't finish her sentence though, because her companion, Lucy, whirled back towards her with a glare. "Don't, Lois. Don't even bother. Let it go."

"You're still my little sister. I _can't_ just let it go," Lois told her simply, staring unflappably into the irate woman's face.

Lucy sighed heavily. "You remember when we were little kids and we'd get into a fight? Dad used to line us up in front of him and forced us to make up, like there was a break in the chain of command and he wanted us to fix it." At her older sister's nod, she said, "You want to be a family again? That's a joke, Lois. We're not a family; we never have been. We're just a broken chain of command. And the only way I'll ever forgive you, Lois, is if the General orders me to. You think that's going to happen?"

Lois looked pained. "No," she whispered.

"Then I guess you're just going to have to live with that." With these rather damning words, Lucy slung her purse over her shoulder and stormed out. Though he wanted to move to Lois's side (as close as he was able) and offer her comfort, he remembered her words and checked himself. She'd been incredibly clear about her instructions, so instead of moving towards her, he waited until she stood and walked out before he followed.

Three blocks from the café, the two of them turned down a side street and walked into a small park, where they found a bench by a narrow gravel path. It was only after they'd both sat down on opposite ends of the bench that Clark found the courage to speak. "Lois? What happened in the café…you want to talk about it?"

She shook her head. "Not particularly," she admitted. Glancing at his face, she pressed her lips together tightly. "Just…just leave it, okay? Besides, we've got other things to worry about."

"O-okay," he agreed grudgingly. He didn't really know that it was a good idea to just "leave it" as she'd put it, but he also knew he wouldn't get anywhere by pushing her about it. "So…uh…what did she give you? Is it about my mom?"

"Uh huh," she admitted as she tore the envelope open and pulled out the sheet of paper inside. "Lucy's got connections with people who…let's just say they're no longer returning my calls, if they ever did. So I gave her what little information I had on your mom and asked if she could get me a list of likely suspects. See anyone on this list that looks promising?"

Clark scanned the list of six names in silence. Along with the name, the list included each of the women's addresses. "Maybe…maybe this one," he said, pointing to an entry that seemed promising. It was the only one with an address in Metropolis.

"Why that one?" Lois asked, craning her neck to see the list from where she sat on the far end of the bench.

He shrugged. "No real reason, I guess. Except my mom lived in Metropolis when she was younger; it's where she went to school and met my dad. I think she might have decided to go back there after…after everything that happened."

"Fair enough," Lois replied, taking the paper from his hand and slipping it into its envelope. "We'll hit that address first. So, how are we going to get there without one of us dying on the trip?"

Clark frowned, acknowledging the dilemma. The two of them in a small car would not work; there simply wasn't space. They'd only managed to make it to the café together by taking the bus. "I could go alone," he suggested.

"Not a chance, Sparky," she responded quickly. "Or have you forgotten? We don't know if there's some bad blood between your mom and Kal-El. The last thing we want to do is give the poor woman a heart attack."

"Okay, so what would you suggest?" he asked heavily.

Lois looked thoughtful. Then a tiny smirk quirked at the edges of her lips. "Clark, have you ever driven a motorcycle before?"

Clark had to admit that Lois's connection to Bruce came in handy at times. She hadn't even needed to explain the situation to Alfred when she'd called him on her cell to ask if she could borrow one of Bruce's many vehicles. Without so much as a single question, the austere gentleman told her he'd have a motorcycle delivered to her apartment immediately.

When Clark asked who Alfred was as he and Lois stood together in her living room once more, waiting for the delivery, she replied simply, "Bruce is an orphan, and Alfred is…well, he's pretty much the only family Bruce has left. I guess you could say he's part butler, part conscience, and part mother hen, but the only thing you _really_ need to know about him is that man makes these double chocolate chunk brownies that can bring grown men to their knees."

"Sounds…er…great," Clark replied, a bit dubiously; he was feeling a little grumpy again. Honestly, he was beginning to wonder, was there a single thing about Bruce or anyone having to do with Bruce that Lois _didn't_ like?

Happily, he didn't have much time to ponder his churlishness, because a buzz at the door indicated that their delivery had arrived. "Sorry it's got to be a bike," Lois said as the two of them jogged outside. "But, see, Alfred's got me kinda on probation from borrowing Bruce's cars for a while."

"Oh, yeah?" Clark asked politely, though he was pretty sure he'd vomit if he heard Lois talk about Bruce one more time.

"Yeah," she said, not seeming to pick up on the undercurrents of his bad mood. "He apparently says I'm a bad influence on Bruce, with the way I drive." Only because it seemed odd that this statement would be made about a grown man did Clark throw his companion a curious look. It certainly wasn't because he wanted to hear more about the absent billionaire. But as Lois slipped on a pair of sunglasses, he saw her mouth widen into a mischievous smirk. "But, hey, what's the point of having a product of fine Italian craftsmanship if you're not going to channel your inner Mario Andretti, right?"

Clark grunted in reply. Clearly, there was a story there, and it was probably even an amusing one. However, it was definitely one that had to do with Bruce and Lois, what great friends they were, and the trouble the two of them got in together, so Clark had absolutely no desire to hear it.

Perhaps it was fortunate that Lois was ignorant of Clark's sudden spate of irritation. Without further comment, she tossed him the keys, saying, "Okay, well…follow me, and try to keep up, okay?"

The road to Metropolis didn't take long, and with the way Lois drive, it took even less time. Clark marveled as he watched her weave in and out of traffic. He was able to steel himself to follow, but he at least had the comfort of knowing he was invulnerable, so at least he wouldn't be hurt if he were to be involved in an accident. Lois had no such assurance, and so he was hardly assured on her behalf.

But, either through fortune or fate, the two of them made it to Metropolis in safety. They parked in front of the address Lois had been given, and Clark looked at the plain white façade of the building with some trepidation. He couldn't help but wonder what he'd find inside. Would his mother be as scared of him as Lois had been? There was only one way to find out.

"Maybe I should go in first," Lois suggested as they stood on the sidewalk and stared in trepidation at the door. "We've gotta anticipate our worst case scenario, here. If your mom is afraid of Kal-El, then having someone who looks just like him show up at her door could freak her out."

He grimaced. That it wasn't a bad idea was something he didn't really want to admit. "But she's my mom, and I –"

"Clark, I understand," Lois said, turning to him. She looked like she was going to step closer, but given that she was just at the limit of his tolerability now, it was a good thing that she refrained. "I'm not talking about you not going in at all. I'm just saying, you know, that maybe I should prepare her first."

After a moment, he gave her a reluctant nod. "Okay, I guess – I guess that makes sense. I'll stay out here and listen in…if I can. I still haven't gotten the hang of all my abilities yet. As soon as it seems like she's prepared to see me, though, I'm going to go see her!"

"Of course," Lois agreed with a nod before squaring her shoulders and marching forward, leaving Clark behind on the sidewalk to stare impotently after her. He watched as she knocked on the door and gained entry, and then he tried to focus his hearing on the house in front of him. Though it took longer than he'd hoped, he finally managed to pick up Lois's voice again.

_"…to drop in on you like this, but it's about your son." Lois's voice was clear and strong, lacking in any self-consciousness, and Clark had to admire her confidence, given that they both know she'd sound insane if she explained much about the situation._ Clark caught his breath at the sound of his mother's voice, and if it wasn't for the fact that her voice sounded brittle and on-edge, he'd have rushed through the door right then.

"I'm sorry, what's your name again?"

_"Lois. Lois Lane."_ A long silence followed this confession, and with his eyes squeezed shut, Clark could picture the expression on the woman in question's face at that moment. Though he'd yet to get the whole story from her, he had picked up on enough to know that she seemed to have something of an infamous reputation in this world – no small thanks to Kal-El. Whatever it was he'd done, she'd been forced to carry some of the blame.

Finally, his mother spoke again. _"The reporter for the Gotham Gazette?"_

Again, the voice that replied was unwavering."Once upon a time."

"Well, I don't know what you're doing here, Miss Lane, but I don't have anything to say to you." Now Martha's voice was angry, with a deep undercurrent of pain. Whatever she thought about this newest intrusion into her life, in was clearly unwelcome. "I lost my son…a long time ago."

"I understa–" Lois began, but she wasn't allowed to continue.

Before any explanation could be forthcoming, there was a loud banging sound, as if a fist had been slammed angrily against a wooden surface. And yet, when his mom spoke again, her voice sounded more terrified than angry – though there was a definite note of pain in her words. "And what are you doing here, anyway? For a story? What could you possibly want to know about my son? H-he disappeared a long time ago! What are you doing here, digging up old ghosts?"

There was that word again. Ghosts. It seemed as if, in this world, everyone had them. More, it seemed like everyone was one in this world. A ghost, a shadow – a reflection of the people they could and should have been.

As Clark listened, he realized that the situation inside was quickly degenerating and Lois wasn't having much success in getting to tell her story. His mom was obviously afraid that Lois had somehow stumbled across the truth – that the man known as Kal-El had grown up a very different person. A boy named Clark Kent.

Without a second thought, he strode forward and charged into the house unannounced. He came not a second too soon, it was clear. His mother, seated behind a desk in the living room, was pale, her lips pressed tight together though her cheeks were blotchy with anger. She was easily as livid as she was scared. For her part, Lois was looking alternately mutinous and at a loss for how to proceed.

"M-mom?" Clark began hopefully as he saw his mother's gaze switch to him. He hoped he'd made the situation better, but he recognized he might have just made it a hell of a lot worse. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lois whirled to look at him, but his gaze was focused firmly on his mother's face as he waited for her to process this newest surprise.

When she finally did react, he felt his heart shatter into a million pieces. In slow, deliberate movements, she began to move around the desk, but she didn't stand to do so. When she'd cleared the edge of the table, he could see why.

His mother was in a wheelchair.

He sank to his knees at the sight, knowing somewhere deep inside that, just as with the injuries Lois had sustained, this, too, was somehow his fault. "Oh god…no…" he whimpered, wanting to cover his face with his hands but unable to tear his gaze away from the woman in front of him.

He was waiting for her to turn from him, as Lois had done, too afraid of the man this world's Clark had become to let him close. But when she finally spoke, her words surprised him. "Cl-Clark?" she stammered in an agonized whisper. "Y-you're really…?" Even as he watched, her surprised expression melted into a beatific smile and she burst into tears as she held her hands towards him, murmuring his name like a benediction again and again.

She hadn't called him Kal-El; she'd recognized him as Clark. Even as he marveled at that, he raced to her side, sweeping her into his arms to hold her close as the two of them wept together. She was sobbing with joy to have her boy back, he knew, and he was crying for so many reasons. He was crying for her, for what had been done to her. He was also crying for Lois and everyone else Kal-El had hurt in this world. Finally, he was crying for himself, the life he'd rather thoughtlessly given up to come to this world, where everything was wrong. It was just so wrong here. And, try as he might, he knew he might never make it back home – or even if, given the choice, he would be able to make the decision to do so. There were just so many things here he needed to fix, so many mistakes the Kal-El of this world had made that he had to atone for.

Even as these thought raced through his mind, he saw Lois out of the corner of his eye as she took a step towards the two people huddled on the ground in front of her. She had a strange, inexplicable expression on her face, but then she turned away and Clark's attention returned to the woman sobbing on his shoulder.

It took a while before the tears stopped for the both of them, and Martha pulled away a bit. "I don't understand…C-Clark, how…?"

Clark didn't even begin to know how to answer the question, but before he could stammer out an inane reply, Lois spoke up from the position she'd taken by the window, much further away than the Kryptonite she wore dictated. "How did you know it was him?" she asked curiously. "I mean, that it was Clark and not Kal-El."

Martha didn't take her eyes off her son as she answered with a watery smile, "I just knew. He's my son…I just knew…"

Lois's face twisted again, but she apparently decided not to join in the conversation any further, because she turned and gazed out through the window once more. It was up to Clark to explain what he and Lois were doing on Martha's doorstep and what he and a woman named Chloe were doing in this world at all. Perhaps all the years of raising an alien child had worn away his mom's ability to be terribly astonished, because while she expressed amazement at the story he was telling, she seemed to process it all fairly well.

When he'd finished his story, his mom sat quietly in her chair for a minute or two, and then she asked, "So, I don't understand. What are you…you're trying to find your way back?" He nodded

"Y-yeah," he said a little uncertainly, wondering why he didn't feel so certain about that. He wanted to go home, to get back to the people he loved…didn't he? But part of him felt like he couldn't leave, not yet. He had to make amends for the terrible things Kal-El had done – once he found out exactly what that was. "We thought…I mean, I thought…do you know if the Clark of this world ever built his fortress in the arctic? We thought maybe…maybe Jor-El would know if…"

"No!" Martha blurted, cutting off Clark's tentative suggestion. "Clark, you can't!" Her tone was so vehement that Clark was taken somewhat aback. Leaning forward in her chair, she cried, "You can't go see him! It isn't safe! The last time you trusted him, I lost my son! You…he was Clark when he left, but when he got back…"

Her voice trailed off, but Clark didn't need her to finish her sentence. When he got back, he'd been different. "I don't…I don't know how else to get home, Mom. The crystal that brought Chloe and I here broke; I can't use it to get back."

Looking dissatisfied, Martha sat back in her chair with a frown. Finally, she spat, "And you're working with her?"

The "her" to which his mother referred could be no mystery, as Martha's gaze shot to the woman standing in front of the window. Though Lois didn't respond – or even so much as turn around – Clark could see her shoulders stiffen, and he knew she hadn't missed his mother's pointed remark.

"Lois?" Clark asked in surprise, wondering at his mother's animosity. Earlier, he'd imagined that Martha was simply feeling defensive to find a reporter (or former reporter) on her doorstep asking about her missing son. Now he wondered if there wasn't something more beneath it all. "I don't understand," he said slowly. "Why…?"

"What has she told you? About Kal-El, I mean?" Martha demanded, and at this, Clark saw Lois turn around, her arms crossed in front of her chest. Though her chin was raised belligerently, she didn't offer a comment.

"Nothing," he admitted, looking between the two women before him. "Why? What hasn't she told me?" As the words left his mouth, he realized the question was absurd. When he thought about it, he realized that Lois hadn't told him much of anything – not about Kal-El at any rate. He'd imagined her recalcitrance was because the memories were painful, but was there another reason?

"She hasn't told you what Kal-El did?" Martha pressed again, glaring accusingly at Lois as she spoke.

Lois arched her eyebrows in challenge, and Clark admitted, "She told me…she told me that he killed people."

His mom's eyes shot to his face. "It's a lie," she bit off angrily. "My son wouldn't do something like that."

"But Lois said…" he protested, but his mom cut him off.

"I know what she said, and I don't care. I'm telling you that my son would never have killed anyone! I don't care what she wrote!" Returning an accusing glare to Lois's face, she finished, "He was different when he came back. He wasn't the boy I raised. But I don't care; he never would have done the things she accused him of. Not my son."

But he hadn't been her son, not really; Clark couldn't help the thought that came to mind. He knew it, deep inside. Whoever – _whatever_ – Kal-El had been, it had no longer been Martha and Jonathan Kent's son – just as he wasn't the same Clark who'd humiliated himself publicly by singing to the woman he loved. He wanted to be that man, but it wasn't him. Not yet; maybe not ever.

"But what did he do?" he whispered, looking between the two women. He wanted answers, and all he'd really been given were more questions.

"I told you," Lois finally said, her voice strong but lacking emotion. "He let people die."

Though Martha opened her mouth to protest, her words were interrupted by the sound of a knock on the door. Her attention diverted, his mom looked at the clock and muttered something darkly under her breath before turning to look at Clark with desperate eyes. "You can't stay here," she said suddenly. "You have to go."

"Wait; what? Why?" he demanded as his mom wheeled her chair backwards. Even as he asked, he heard the scrape of metal against metal; someone was unlocking the door.

"You can't be found here," his mom explained hurriedly. "That's my assistant. If she finds you here…it would be impossible to explain, don't you see? My son disappeared a long time ago; if we say that you've suddenly come back, there would be too many questions! Someone would notice that you look like Kal-El, and I just…You'd be in danger, sweetie."

He grabbed her hand and gave it a quick squeeze. "It's okay," he murmured. "I understand. When she gets in here, you distract her and Lois and I will duck out before anyone sees us."

His mom's hand lingered in his own longer than necessary, and he could see in her eyes that she was having as hard a time letting him go as he was walking away from her. He'd promised to take care of her. How could he do that if he had to leave her? Though part of him rebelled at the idea, he had to accept the fact that, at least at the moment, he'd put his mom in more danger by being found with her than she would be in alone.

"Come on, Lois," he said quietly as he finally released his mom's hand and backed away. "We have to go."

"Clark!" his mom blurted in a low hiss as the front door opened and slammed behind a woman who called out a very cheerful greeting. Glaring at the woman moving to Clark's side, Martha continued in an undertone, "Listen to me…you can't trust her. Whatever she tells you…you can't listen to her! Kal-El would never have done the things she accused him of!"

Clark still wanted to know what that was, exactly, but he didn't have time to ask. Instead, he and Lois moved to opposite corners of the room to keep out of sight as the newcomer walked through the door and straight towards his mom's desk. Even as he and Lois made their escape, however, he resolved that he wouldn't be put off any longer. As soon as the two of them made it back to her apartment, he was going to get the answers to his questions.

He was going to find out what, exactly, Kal-El had done.


	10. Answers

**Answers**

Clark spent the ride back to Lois's place contemplating how he would approach her with his questions, but he still hadn't made any real headway on the issue by the time he pulled up in front of her apartment. The two of them were silent as Lois let them inside, and though Clark's thoughts were occupied with Kal-El, he wondered what was on her mind.

Probably nothing good, he decided, given that their encounter with his mother hadn't gone as he'd expected. He wondered why his mom had reacted as she had to Lois's presence – but, then, that brought him around to the Kal-El Question again.

"Listen, Lois…I'm sorry about…about before. With my mom," he said sheepishly, seeking a way to fill the uncomfortable silence.

He was surprised to see a wry smile on her face when she turned to face him after placing her purse on the table. "It's okay," she said with a small shrug. "This may come as a surprise to you, but I get that kind of reaction a lot, actually."

"Lois, why do you hate Kal-El so much?" he blurted, forgoing the struggle to find a subtle way to bring up the topic.

He heard her sigh and watched as she looked away from him and raised her hand to her necklace to finger the Kryptonite pendant. "Clark, I'm not sure…it's not…it doesn't really matter, does it?" she asked, still not looking at him.

"It matters to me," he replied softly, seeing how difficult this was for her. He wished he didn't have to bring up what were undoubtedly bad memories, but he had a feeling the answer to his question was much more important than either of them thought.

She hung her head for a moment, but there was resignation in her eyes when she looked up at him. "All right," she said with a twist of her lips. "Grab your hat and sunglasses; we're going for a walk."

"We are?" he asked in confusion, though he did what she asked.

"If I'm going to tell you this story, then we're taking a walk while I do it," she said, waiting for him to scoot a safe distance away before preceding him through the door. They walked for a while in silence, keeping enough distance between their bodies so that Clark didn't suffer from negative effects of Kryptonite exposure. Clark let Lois set their course, but eventually she began to speak.

"You sure you want to hear this, Kent?" she asked in a lighthearted manner. "This is your last chance to back out of it! I won't think less of you if you back out now."

"I probably don't want to know about Kal-El," he admitted. "But I think I need to. How did the two of you meet?"

She chuckled. "He saved my life, actually." She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and must have noted his expression, because she asked, "That surprises you?"

"A little bit," he admitted. "I mean…I guess I thought…"

With a nod, Lois finished his sentence, "You thought he would never do something nice like that? Well, I guess it just goes to show you. Even Kal-El will surprise you." She seemed amused; her tone was even lightly teasing. However, she sobered up a bit as she continued, "I'd been thrown out of a plane without a parachute."

"A plane?" he squeaked. He didn't know which was more alarming – that she'd apparently been thrown out of a plane at some point in her past or that she seemed rather nonchalant about the experience. "And…uh…does this happen to you a lot?"

"More often than you'd think," she admitted with a shrug. "Anyway, he rescued me on the way down, which I have to admit I really appreciated." Pausing in her step, she turned to him and said sternly, "By the way, just because I admitted that I appreciated his rescue, I don't want you to get the wrong impression. I'm perfectly capable of saving myself, and I'm sure I would have found a way to save myself if I'd had to."

"How?" he asked, tilting his head to the side and regarding her with a mischievous glint in his eye. "Were you planning on growing wings?"

"If I'd had to," she replied dryly. "You doubting me, Kent?" she challenged.

Shaking his head, he grinned down at her. "Never, Lane. Anyway, you were saying?"

After a short pause, she gave one quick, satisfied nod of the head and said, "Right. So, anyway…I'd been working on a story, and some people weren't too happy about that, so they chucked me out of a plane. Kal-El caught me; I think he was more curious to know what I was doing in that situation, more than anything else, if you want to know the truth. He took me home, and that was how I landed the first exclusive interview with Metropolis's own Kal-El."

"Sounds pretty great," he admitted. "So what happened? I mean, why'd you and he…? I mean, if he saved you…it sounds like he was a hero."

"I thought so, too. I remember that night, when he took me home…" With a grimace, she glowered up at him. "Okay, listen, Kent, I'm going to confess something to you, but this stays between us, alright? And after I've finished telling you about Kal-El, you never heard me tell you this. Understand?" He nodded. "Okay. Well…when I first met Kal-El, it's possible that I had…that I developed…that I may have fooled myself for a very, very short time into thinking that I had a…a bit of a…a crush on him, really. I know, it's absurd and pretty embarrassing, but there you go. It was just that he…he came from out of nowhere and just swept me into his arms, and I thought he…that he was…well, anyway, I thought I had a crush on him.

"But even that night, I should have realized that he wasn't the person I thought he was. He was just too…when he took me home that evening, while I was trying to talk him into giving me an exclusive interview, I tried to convince him of all the good that could come from the world knowing about him and what he could do. I tried to…I told him I could help him. I think I even told him that maybe I could be his f-friend, as ridiculous as that sounds in retrospect."

By the expression on her face, Clark could tell that Kal-El had not been receptive to this idea. "I think it things didn't go as you'd hoped."

With a wry twist of her lips, she admitted, "Not exactly. He told me that he didn't need friends, and that he certainly didn't need any help from a mere human."

Clark spluttered at this. "A m-mere…he didn't actually say that, did he?"

Lois had a rueful expression on her face as she nodded. "Yeah, swept me right off my feet with that one. But still, as embarrassing as it is, I didn't really get it, even then. I mean, I realized that he didn't…it's hard to explain. He didn't connect well with other people, I guess you could say, but he told me he was an alien and I figured he'd just…you know…arrived or something, so I thought he would adapt, that he would learn how to relate to other people or warm up to them or something."

"But he didn't." It wasn't a question.

"You catch on pretty quick," she said with a chuckle. "No, he didn't. Don't get me wrong; he did get a little better. At least I thought he had. But in the end, I guess I never really knew him at all.

"But, anyway, for a while, things got better. He warmed up a little to people, though I don't think you could ever say that he really let anyone get close. He was always a little unapproachable, a little cold. He saved us, and we were grateful to him for it, but I don't think we ever came to love him the way that I think he could have been loved if things had been different. As much as we appreciated what he did for the city, people were always a little scared of him."

"Even you?" Clark asked, a little surprised. Of course, he knew she'd come to fear him, but he'd had the impression that this hadn't always been the case.

"Not at first," he admitted. "I _believed_ in him, you know? Or maybe I just wanted to believe in him. Even though I saw the way he was, I knew he always thought he was a little above us, I also saw the way he could be. Maybe I just saw the man I wanted him to be."

Lois's head bowed as she lapsed into silence, and Clark let her be as they strolled a couple more blocks. He pondered the story she'd revealed thus far as he listened to the soft sound of his footsteps falling in tandem with hers. Glancing over at her, he pondered the distance between them – the oh-so necessary distance that had to be ensured at all times for his protection. And perhaps for her protection, as well. Even with as little as he now knew, he suspected that Lois maintained not just a physical distance from him but an emotional one, as well – and that she would continue to do so (or so he suspected) as a matter of self-preservation. Would he ever be able to get close to her? He could only wonder. And if, by some chance, she ever allowed him to get close enough to her to take her hand in his, to wrap her in his arms and promise to keep her safe, he wondered if she'd ever let him _truly_ get close to her – to trust him, to depend upon him. To care about him, even if just as a friend. To be for him what another Lois had been for a far more deserving Clark than he. Finally, when his thoughts became too much for him to bear and although he knew the conversation was hardly likely to become easier for her, he asked softly, "So what changed between you?"

They had reached the edges of a small park, and Lois altered their course, cutting across the grass as she headed towards some benches surrounding a statute in the center of the park. "Fix your hat; you don't want to be noticed," Lois muttered in an undertone as she sat on the far side of the bench from Clark, still careful to maintain that distance between them.

As Clark did as she directed, Lois shifted in her seat, her expression darkening as she recalled the past. "Like I said, for a while, people trusted Kal-El. They never loved him, and they never really trusted him. Of course, if everyone hadn't been more scared of him than they were grateful for all that he did, I probably wouldn't be in the mess I'm in."

Clark stared at her curiously, but he didn't press her. He trusted that she'd tell him the rest of the story in her own time. After a moment, she continued, "I don't really know why Kal-El agreed to the partnership with Lex."

"Lex Luthor?" he asked in surprise and a little trepidation. He thought about the friend he knew, but he remembered that another world's Lois had feared Lex and he wondered which version of his friend had existed in this timeline. Apparently oblivious to his internal conflict, Lois continued, "Maybe Lex wasn't scared of him like so many others were, or maybe he just pretended better than anyone else did."

"I thought you weren't scared of him," he interjected. "Or had something changed by that point?"

"No, I still wasn't afraid of him, really. But over the years, things had…changed between us. He'd always been a little stiff around me, of course, but he was that way with everyone. I can't say it was entirely his fault. I guess I never really forgot the man I knew he could be, and maybe I was just tired of the disappointment."

"It wasn't your fault," Clark said comfortingly. "Whatever happened, it wasn't your fault."

"That's because you don't know what happened," she said sadly. "Anyway, for whatever reason, as much as I'd spent years trying to be close to him, there was always this distance between us. I interviewed him more times than I could count, but I don't think I ever really got to know him. But I guess none of that matters now."

With a heavy sigh, she said, "I guess there's no point in dragging all this out any longer, is there? So Kal-El agreed to work with Lex Luthor, the Greatest Man in Metropolis…his PR, not mine. I don't know about "Great" but he certainly was the most powerful man in Metropolis, so I guess it wasn't a huge surprise when he and Kal-El decided to work together. Lex's company developed a number of experimental – and highly dangerous – projects, and there was something comforting about knowing that Kal-El was there to watch over everything and make sure that nobody got hurt in the event of an accident.

"And then Lex decided to build a space station – the largest, most advanced space station to date. It was touted as a marvel of technology. Highly experimental, of course, but when Lex announced his plans, just about every reporter in the world started thrusting microphones in front of every scientist they could get their hands on, and all of them said the same thing. With the LuthorCorp Space Station, we could do amazing things – in medicine, military technology, everything.

"Of course, a project like that wasn't without its skeptics. Since it was proposed that fifteen or so people would staff it at all times, at least in the beginning, with that number only increasing over time, everyone wanted to make absolutely sure that it would be safe – at least as safe as these things ever get. So the project got hung up in a lot of red tape; everyone had to sign off on it, and that took time.

"But a number of pretty important people were eager to get it off the ground. Lex made such promises…and I suppose we were only too willing to believe in the new world he promised us. Even me. So when he announced that Kal-El had agreed to help oversee the project, well…all that red tape started to be less of an issue. The people in charge weren't so worried any longer. After all, Kal-El, the Savior of Metropolis, had come out saying that the project would be absolutely safe – and if anything did go wrong, he was willing to personally guarantee the crew members' safety."

As she spoke, Lois ducked her head and started to pick at an invisible piece of lint on her shirt. Clark watched the wisps of her hair blow in the slight breeze as he waited for her to continue, his heart growing ever heavier in his chest with each word that she spoke.

"All of a sudden, everyone was scrambling to get the space station up and running. Politicians were clamoring because it was a popular project and they wanted to look good for their constituents. Lex talked up the project at every opportunity, and there was so much enthusiasm for it. Of course, as soon as Lex announced his plans, the clock had started to tick – competing companies were racing to get their projects approved before his station could get approval – and even though they weren't going to be as advanced as Lex's, the space race is still all about who gets there first."

"I don't understand," Clark cut in. "If everyone was so excited about it, why the delay?"

Lois laughed. "Ironically enough, because it was tied to Kal-El. Like I said, people were glad for all he'd done, but they didn't trust him. For the politicians endorsing the project, Kal-El's involvement was a great line they could sell the public to drum up support, but they were like just about everyone else. Deep down, they were scared of him. So while it was something of a relief to know that he'd be there if anything went wrong…people were frightened of having anything to do with something that was so closely tied to him. They didn't really trust him.

"This, in case you were wondering is where I come in," she said with wry amusement as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Kal-El came to me for help. I'm not going to go into all the messy details, but he came to me with the details of the space station. He was so…the way he talked about the project…I believed him when he said he was involved with the project because of all the good it could do. He was so passionate about it; he talked about how he knew he wasn't a part of this world, but he believed that, with this project, he could help Lex do something truly amazing.

"He fed me a line, and I fell for it. Oh, don't get me wrong; he knew exactly how to play me. He let me look at the plans, with the understanding that they were to remain confidential, so that I could satisfy myself as to the safety of the proposed project. He seemed so…sincere. I was to look at the project, decide on it for myself, and then, of course, write a story about it."

They were quiet as Clark considered the story he'd been told thus far, and then he asked, "So did you?"

With a nod, she responded, "Of course I did. I was a reporter, after all. To his credit, Kal was true to his word. I was given a copy of the plans, and they gave me all the time I needed to assure myself that it was safe. I didn't entirely trust Lex, so I took it to every scientist, engineer, architect, and anyone else I could trust to keep it confidential to have it evaluated, and they all came back with the same answer. So far as they could tell, the LuthorCorp Space Station was not only the forefront of technology, but it was as safe as man could reasonably make it.

"So I wrote a story about my findings, and Lex used it to help allay some of the fears that had put his project on hold. After all, Lois Lane, star investigative reporter for the Gotham Gazette, had signed off on the safety of the project after a thorough investigation, and the Gotham Gazette, one of the top newspapers in the country – if not the world – had stood by the veracity of her words by printing the story. All of a sudden, all that red tape became less of a problem, and the project went ahead.

"But even though I hadn't been able to prove that there was anything wrong with the plans for the station…I don't know. Something still bugged me, and I couldn't let it go."

She raised her hand to her face and began to rub her forehead, and Clark could tell that they'd gotten to the hardest part of the story. "There wasn't much I could do at that point. Things had moved rapidly ahead; I kept investigating, but the station had been built and manned in the meantime.

"Anyway, like I said, the station was supposed to be the forefront of medicine, military technology, everything. So I found out from some contacts of mine that some of the engineers on board had been working on a new weapon. The details were highly classified; nobody would tell me anything about it. But I found out that some high-ranking military men had been invited to spend two days on the station to watch the weapon's test. So I went to the General – my father – and asked him if he could pull some strings so that he could go along.

"I can't tell you how hard it was to convince him to do it. I think if I hadn't managed to convince him that we could be talking about the safety of the entire world, he never would have agreed to it. But, for whatever reason, and with however many strings he had to pull to get up there, he eventually agreed to do what I'd asked. Of course, he told me he wouldn't be able to divulge any confidential information to me, but he agreed to check it out."

Though Clark had been the one to push her to tell him the story, he suddenly felt like he didn't really want to know the rest. Maybe she'd been right, in the beginning. Maybe he didn't really want to know why she hated Kal-El so much. Maybe he didn't want to know the end of the story. He should never have started this, but, having begun her story, Lois seemed ready to carry it on to the bitter end.

"In the end," she continued, "I guess I have the small consolation of knowing that I was right, at least. There was a problem on the space station. See, the thing was, for all his pretty words, Lex didn't trust Kal-El any more than the rest of the world did. In secret, up on the space station, Lex was conducting experiments with Kryptonite. Maybe he only intended to use them if Kal-El ever posed a danger to the world. Maybe not. But whatever he had planned, it backfired on him.

"What happened next…Well, nobody really knows for sure. What few reports there are all pretty much conflict with each other. But from what we do know, whatever new weapon they were testing, the test went wrong somehow and the station was compromised. Kal-El flew out to help, and that's where reports differ. Some experts say there had to be a flaw in the design of the station. Some say the station was sound and the accident was unavoidable. Whatever caused the accident, we do know for a fact that, there was an explosion, the station's integrity was compromised and an emergency evacuation was ordered.

"It's unclear whether two of the station's three escape shuttles were damaged in the explosion or whether there was just a chance that they'd been damaged and it was too dangerous to attempt to take one. We do know that some of the Kryptonite on-board had been blown up in the explosion and affected Kal-El when he tried to help.

"There wasn't much even he could do, at that point. The station was a loss; the only question was how to rescue the people on-board. But everyone couldn't fit on the one escape shuttle, so…"

"He decided," Clark interjected. He could already tell how the story was going to end. When she glanced over at him, he explained, "You said that he let people die. That's what he did, isn't it? He chose who got to be saved."

One quick jerk of her head confirmed his suspicions. "He chose," she repeated. "And, after that shuttle took off, he had a chance. He could have loaded everyone else onto the remaining shuttle and tried to take them to safety. He could have tried _something_. But he didn't.

"Of course, he was weakened by Kryptonite exposure. The people who did make it back alive testified that he'd expressed his concern that, if he remained behind to try to help everyone else, he might grow too weak to make it back alive himself.

"So he chose. Six people out of the twenty-two people aboard the LuthorCorp Space Station made it back alive. Everyone else was lost as he abandoned the station and flew back to Earth. There was another explosion, and every one of the remaining sixteen people died."

"Your father?" he asked, though he supposed he didn't need to. The pain in her eyes was answer enough.

Gesturing towards the statue in front of them, Lois remarked, "This statue is a memorial to the sixteen people lost that day. Take a look."

Rising very slowly to his feet, Clark walked to the statute and read the plaque of names engraved on the side. As he'd suspected, "General Sam Lane" was engraved halfway through the list of the dead. "Lex Luthor" was engraved immediately beneath.

Clark's breath was coming in ragged gasps as he read the names, one right after the other. Part of him was trying to rebel. It wasn't true; it couldn't be! He would never do such a thing! In no reality could he allow such a thing to happen!

But Kal-El had.

He heard Lois's say softly from a few steps behind him, "The rest of the story almost writes itself, doesn't it? In the aftermath of the tragedy, everyone was looking for someone to blame – and who better than the reporter who had so publicly signed off on the mission, particularly since she'd seemed so close to Kal-El? The woman who discovered him, who named him. The only reporter to ever interview him. The world couldn't take its rage out upon him; they couldn't touch him and they knew it. So they turned to me.

"And so did he. He came to me, two days after the explosion. I don't know what he wanted, actually. He tried to talk to me. He wanted to ask something of me. But I was…I was angry, and I was grief-stricken. I told him to leave, and when he wouldn't, I…I…

"We argued, and in the end, he grew angry. I don't know if he meant to do what he did, but when he tried to leave, I…I was just so angry at him! I grabbed on to him, and he…He shoved me away. Hard."

She didn't fill in the gaps, but he didn't need her to. She had been injured – he didn't know exactly how, but he had no doubt that her injuries had been serious. He supposed that he could ask, if he truly needed to know, but frankly, he wasn't sure he could take the truth any longer.

"Lois…I-I'm sorry for what…I don't even know what to say," he stammered.

Shrugging, she thrust her hands in her pockets and turned. "Say? There's nothing you can say, Clark," she said as she started to walk back towards the street. "You wanted to know why I hate Kal-El, and I've told you. He took so much from me. My reputation. My career. My family. My father died on-board that station, and Lucy hates me as much as everyone else for my role in the situation. She lost not only her father, but her husband in that explosion. You want to know why I hate him? How could I do anything else?"


End file.
